HOMILY FOR THE 19TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR B 1 Kings 19:4-8/ Psalm 34/ Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:41-51 THEME: Stop murmuring

Christ is the living bread essential to us as a pilgrim people called to an “impossible” love on earth, and eternal life with God: this is the essential message of today’s readings. Both the bread God gives Elijah (First Reading) and the manna he gives the Israelites (Gospel) prefigure the Eucharist. It enables them to complete their journey, to where God has called them; yet neither has the virtue and the power of the living bread, Jesus, who feeds us with his word and with his own flesh. Strengthened by this bread, we become able to follow his way of love, and the seed of eternal life is sown in us (Second Reading and Gospel). The first reading of today forms part of the large section of the First Book of Kings (Chapter 17, 18 & 19). Elijah had raised to life the son of the widow of Zarephath; he has won victory over the prophets of Baal; he had predicted drought in the land and the like. All these events show God’s hand powerfully at work in his life. Yet, today, he flees from Jezebel who wanted to kill him because he had killed the prophets of baal. Elijah was so frustrated that he told God: “… he asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors’ (1Kings 19:4). This is surely human nature. In our moments of adversity, we easily forget about the successes God has enabled us to attain. The pilgrimage of Christian life can be arduous. There are times when life – or maybe just the coming week! – can appear too arduous a journey. God speaks to us then, as to Elijah; like Elijah, we often do not get the message. He has to repeat it, arouse us again and again from our discouragements and lack of trust. We need to learn not to let the minutes and hours of our life leak away through the cracks of our inaction and faint-heartedness. This necessary pilgrimage is “the time of grace and mercy which God offers [man] so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the divine plan and to decide his ultimate destiny” (CCC 1013). Compared with the eternal life God promises us, the span of our lives is a mere speck, a tiny instant; whatever the effort required to reach the “mountain of God”, where all is right, forever, it is eminently worthwhile. By referring to the “murmuring” of the people – their critical small-mindedness and complaining – Jesus quite deliberately harks back to the people of the exodus, who had also “murmured” against God in the desert (Exodus 16:2). This is a pervasive and extremely negative human trait in which the echoes of mankind’s first sin, with its distrust of God’s benevolence (Genesis 3:5), still reverberate all too clearly. It fails to take into account: that God is our Father; that everything he allows is a precious gift of his love to us; that everything is not just possible but “easy” for him; and that we cannot possibly grasp more than a very faint inkling of his intentions and his plans. On both occasions in the desert, God “shows up” how inadequate purely human thinking, unenlightened by faith, really is. The strength of Christians is found in the Eucharist. And yet it is true that by ourselves, like Elijah, we would be unable to reach the goal. The goal proposed to us as Christians – how we should live in this life, what will be in the next – is so lofty that not even what God worked in Old Testament times is enough. “Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died”. To walk through this life in such a way as to be worthy of being called to eternal life – that is, to live lives effectively inspired by love (Matthew 25:16) from which the opposite has been expelled (Second Reading) – we need “the bread that comes down from heaven (Jesus), for a man to eat and never die”. “ Elijah had had enough. The greatest of the Old Testament prophets was n0t just tempted to give up; he practically did so. Is it any wonder then that similar temptations can assail us too? Ours are perhaps less dramatic, but for that very reason, all the more insidious. The Christian way, the “way of love”, is long, and at close range can often seem as barren as the desert that stretched out endlessly before the prophet. We tire of trying to love people who just do not seem very lovable! Sure, it sounds like a beautiful program, but whatever about the saints (and, well, nations and statesmen and Church leaders, whom we readily criticize if they do not follow it), it is not for us. But the Christian message is that it is indeed possible. St Paul reveals the secret for achieving it. Of course, if we do not follow his advice, we should not be surprised we cannot manage it. No one, not even Elijah, can do it on his own. What is the key? Look to Christ. His love is made tangibly present in the Eucharist. Eating his body and drinking his blood we will be fortified to walk the long road. And like Elijah it will enable us to reach the mountain of God. We have the problem that it is too easy for us to receive the body of Christ in Communion. We do not take it seriously. Imagine how we would think about Communion if it were possible to receive it only in one place on earth –say, Jerusalem – and only once in our lifetime. Perhaps we would all have a year-long retreat, with fasting on bread and water, to prepare for it. It would be the high point of our lives. But it is no less marvelous because we can receive Communion every day if we please. It should still be the high point of our lives: we just get to repeat it. The Holy Father’s purpose in writing his recent encyclical on the Eucharist is precisely to revive in us the kind of awed amazement and wonder that should overcome us when confronted with this extraordinary mystery. This is not an emotional response but amazement rooted in faith. It arises if our actions with regard the Eucharist are expressive of such faith: receiving communion frequently and well, dropping into the parish on our way home to pay the Lord a visit, attending adoration or other Eucharistic devotions, reflecting seriously and with wonder on the mystery. In conclusion, the fruit of Holy Communion is overwhelming for “What material food produces in our bodily life, Holy Communion wonderfully achieves in our spiritual life. Communion with the flesh of the risen Christ, a flesh given life and giving life through the Holy Spirit, preserves increases and renews the life of grace received at baptism. This growth in Christian life needs the nourishment of Eucharistic Communion, the bread for our pilgrimage until the moment of death, when it will be given to us as viaticum. CCC 1392). Lessons • Life is a pilgrimage. This necessary pilgrimage is “the time of grace and mercy which God offers [man] so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the divine plan and to decide his ultimate destiny” (CCC 1013). • Stop murmuring. This is a pervasive and extremely negative human trait in which the echoes of mankind’s first sin, with its distrust of God’s benevolence (Genesis 3:5), still reverberate all too clearly. It fails to take into account: that God is our Father; that everything he allows is a precious gift of his love to us; that everything is not just possible but “easy” for him; and that we cannot possibly grasp more than a very faint inkling of his intentions and his plans. On both occasions in the desert, God “shows up” how inadequate purely human thinking, unenlightened by faith, really is. • The strength of Christians is found in the Eucharist. Elijah had had enough. The greatest of the Old Testament prophets was n0t just tempted to give up; he practically did so. Is it any wonder then that similar temptations can assail us too