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8/8 - 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
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Conflict with temporal powers was a common experience of the prophets of the Old Testament. King Ahab of Israel married a pagan queen, Jezebel, who imported pagan worship into Israel. The prophet Elijah challenged 450 of the pagan god Baal’s prophets, defeated them in a public sacrifice-contest and killed all of them. The furious Queen Jezebel sent soldiers to kill the prophet. Today’s first reading expresses Elijah’s discouragement and frustration as he fled for his life. Reaching the rock bottom of his life he prays for death. God heard His prophet’s prayer and sent an angel to feed him and strengthen him in his flight. The miraculous food provided by God sustained him through a 40-day pilgrimage to Horeb (Mount Sinai), where Elijah would be commissioned again as God’s prophet to carry on the struggle and to anoint his successor. Like Elijah, all of us learn to recognize our weakness and frailty and can experience God’s empowering grace which can transform our powerlessness and discouragement. The Liturgy of the Word compares God’s strengthening of his prophet by the miraculously provided food with His strengthening of us in our pilgrimage to Heaven by the Bread from Heaven, namely, the Holy Eucharist.
It may be challenging for us modern minds to believe the proposition that God could be our food and drink. It is just as difficult to believe anything wonderful about ourselves such as eternal life, to hope that there is anything more to sustain us than matter chewed, drunk, and digested. In his conflict with the people around him, Jesus asks them to have Faith. This faith is challenging them to accept something beyond anything they have heard before. The transcendent takes flesh.
It is interesting to find the “Jews” “murmuring” at the discourse on the bread of life, just as the children of Israel did in the wilderness (Exodus 16). The use of this same verb can hardly be accidental, and it calls further attention to the manna/Eucharist typology. They murmur because of another typical explanation in St. John’s style of writing. They know where Jesus came from, they know his parentage. It is as if they know so much about Jesus, that his claim of coming down from heaven cannot be true.
This type of mindset can prevent us too, from believing in the “real presence” of Jesus in the Eucharist. This rationalization will leave with no point to the journey of our life, no answer to the quest of our minds, no final satisfaction for the hunger of our hearts.
Jesus’ reply to the misunderstanding asserts that a knowledge of his heavenly origin is possible only to those who are “drawn to him” in faith by the Father. To be drawn is further defined as hearing and learning from the Father. Faith is not, however, just abstract, notional insight; it involves participating in “eternal life.” Faith is also paradoxical: on the one hand it is a free decision we must make, but on the other hand it involves the gift from God.
To follow Jesus is to live by Faith; to believe means to make those necessary changes to one’s lifestyle that being a believer demands. Then Jesus offers the ultimate reassurance to every one of us who believes: “I will raise him up on the last day”. “Our retirement is out of this world”. This persistent promise serves to remind us that only Jesus, the true Bread of Life, can impart the gift of eternal life.
Be blessed,