The 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 9, 2015
Click here to listen to his
homily (.mp3 file)
There are few stories in the Bible that do not, in one way or another, find an
echo in our own stories. That’s one of the reasons why the inspired Word of God
is not only timeless, but timely.
Take the prophet Elijah’s story in today’s first
reading. Elijah had had it. He had gone from the heights to the depths.
Literally! On the top of Mount Carmel God had allowed him to score a
stunning victory over a whole army of false prophets, calling down fire from
heaven in a dazzling display of power that put the false prophets to shame and
ultimately, to death.
But the victory was short-lived. Elijah’s prophetic
finger-pointing incurred the wrath of Queen Jezebel who determined to kill this
upstart prophet who was threatening her power and influence. So Elijah found
himself running for his life – running into the wilderness, running until he
could run no more. When he collapsed under a broom tree – which is where
our reading began today – Elijah wanted to die. God had abandoned him.
There was no hope. “This is enough, Lord, he prayed, “Take away my life.”
The despair Elijah felt was particularly bitter because he knew he had been
faithful, and where had his faithfulness gotten him?
We all wonder about this at times, don’t we?
Wonder about where our faithfulness gets us? Faithfulness certainly seems to be
no guarantee of rewards – not in the short run, anyway. I think, for instance,
of families having to deal with the unexpected death of a loved one, or of
people trying to come to terms with a very dire medical diagnosis, or of people
who lose all their earthly belongings in a natural disaster. With God’s grace
and the support of family and friends, people who face these huge challenges
often do manage to cope, bravely holding onto faith through some dark days and
nights but, at times, they must, like Elijah of old, wonder where their
faithfulness has gotten them. Like Elijah, there have to be times when they come
close to collapsing under that tree, wanting it all to be over.
And how about you? What’s your ‘Elijah experience’?
I’m not talking about the normal bumps and bruises of life – we expect those and
can usually take them in stride. I’m talking about life-altering things:
the break-up of a marriage; getting laid off of work with a family to support;
having a child turn against you and reject everything you stand for; getting
diagnosed with a debilitating illness. Any of these can land us under the
broom tree with Elijah, convinced that we can no longer go on.
I offer no easy answers here because there
aren’t any, but I do have a favorite story from a favorite saint of mine, St.
Teresa of Avila, the great Spanish Carmelite nun of the sixteenth century. It’s
a story I’ve told before but I tell it again because it can shed some light and
bring some hope – and maybe even a smile. Teresa had a difficult job: she
was a reformer. She traveled all over Spain on a totally thankless mission of
trying to reform the Carmelite convents which had become quite lax and loose.
Not surprisingly, Teresa was not universally loved by the nuns! When she
would arrive at a local convent for her visit, she was rarely greeted with open
arms! One day, worn out and weary from her travels and travails, Teresa
got caught in a storm, complete with thunder, lightning, and torrential rains.
Her carriage overturned and she landed in the mud. Her ensuing exchange
with God went like this: “Why, Lord, is this happening to me?” And
the Lord said, “Because, Teresa, that’s the way I treat all my friends.”
To which Teresa replied, “No wonder you have so few…!”
Where do we go with that? To the same place
Teresa did, the same place Elijah did. They went on: Teresa to continue
her disheartening work; Elijah to walk forty days and nights to the mountain of
God. They went on, but not under their own power. The God who had
seemed to abandon them was there with them. For Elijah, God was there in
the form of an angel who brought food, refreshment, and encouragement. For
Teresa, God was there in an intimate, mystical friendship more real to her than
life itself.
And what about us who can grow weary of the battle
and be tempted to throw in the towel? Should we expect an angel to comfort and
feed, or a voice from heaven? Maybe not, but angels come in many forms, and God
speaks in many ways.
In the gospel today Jesus speaks of a gift greater
even than the ministry of angels, promises food more wondrous even than the
manna given in the wilderness. Jesus promises himself – the Living Bread
come down from heaven, bread to nourish us on our journey, bread to assure us we
will never die. “I myself am the living bread come down from heaven,” he
says. “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world.”
Dear friends, we would not be here were it not for
our hunger for this bread and our belief that in receiving it we receive what we
need to continue our journey, to go on with our struggle whatever it may be. We
eat this bread in faith, faith that is itself a gift from the God who draws us;
we eat it in hope, confident that it has power to lift us up as the angel once
lifted up Elijah; we eat it in loving communion with one another, conscious
that, in receiving the Bread that is Christ’s Body, we are also becoming his
Body. And we eat it in gratitude, counting ourselves blessed, along with St.
Teresa, to be among the friends of God -- “few,” perhaps, but so very fortunate!
Father Michael G. Ryan
