Saturday, August 11, 2018


NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
12 AUGUST 2018

          In today’s first reading, we find Elijah in a state of deep depression.  The last remaining prophet of God, Elijah had defeated the priests of the false gods of the Baal at Mount Carmel.  He demonstrated the faithfulness of God and had proven that the leadership of King Ahab had failed the northern kingdom of Israel.  But instead of basking in his victory, he is running for his life.  Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, has sent her armies to kill him.  After a day’s journey in the desert, Elijah sits under a broom tree and asks for death.  Instead of granting Elijah’s desperate wish, God sends an angel to feed him with a hearth cake and a jug of water.  Still depressed, Elijah lays down again.  When the angel feeds him a second time, he obeys the order and walks for forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb.  It was at Mount Horeb (which is the name given to Mount Sinai by the people of the northern kingdom) that Moses had originally mediated the Covenant between God and his people.  It is to Mount Horeb, nourished by the hearth cake and water, that Elijah would encounter God and regain his confidence in God’s promises.
            Like Elijah, we too are walking on this pilgrimage of life.  As members of the New Covenant sealed with the blood of the Lamb who gave his life for us, we know the many ways we have experienced God’s faithfulness in our lives.  But we also know times when the Lord seems distant from us.  All of us know that there are times in our lives when depression has a way of paralyzing us.  Some battle depression as a chronic condition.  Others experience times of depression that rob us of energy, of hope, and of a sense of God’s presence in our lives.
            For the third Sunday, we continue to reflect on the Bread of Life discourse from the Gospel of John.  Just as God fed Elijah with bread and water to strengthen him on his journey, so the Lord feeds us with his body and blood to strengthen us on ours.  Those who hear his words for the first time cannot believe his promise to be the bread of life.  He is too ordinary for them. They cannot see beyond his ordinary appearance to believe that he is the Eternal Word who has come down from heaven to give them new life.  They forget that their ancestors had complained about the manna in their pilgrimage through the desert from slavery to freedom.  They do the same thing.  They murmur against Jesus and refuse to believe that he will become the new Passover Lamb whose blood will wash away their sins and give eternal life.
            At this Mass, we hear those same words that we who eat his bread will live forever.  Saint Paul believed that promise and reaffirmed it in his letter to the Ephesians.  In writing to the Church of Ephesus two thousand years ago, he might as well have been addressing the conditions of our world today.  Like them, we walk in a world filled with bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling.  We know the political divides that polarize us and end up in shouting matches.  We know the pain when we are attacked on social media.  We know the terrible effects of grief resulting from failure or the death of a loved one.  Like Elijah, it is easy to fall into depression and give up.  But when we share in the Lord’s gift of the Eucharist here, we are nourished to continue our pilgrimage together with a sense of hope and love.  Nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ, we can truly be imitators of God as his beloved children and act like God’s beloved children in a broken world.  Aware of the bonds that bind us, we renew our intentions to be kind to one another, compassionate, and forgiving one another as God has forgiven us in Christ.  Nourished by the Eucharist, we can learn to imitate the Lord’s kindness not only to those we like or agree with, but also to those with whom we disagree or dislike.  That is why we march together to be fed at this Altar.  We are Christ’s Body, and we can make a difference in our world today by behaving as Christ’s Body.

No comments:

Post a Comment