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.
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