Spirituality of the Readings
Here is Food for You
In the First Reading, Elijah had just come from a dangerous showdown with 450 prophets of a god they called Baal, in the land ruled by Jezebel. The God of Israel had easily won this encounter, but Elijah did great violence against the surviving prophets anyway. Queen Jezebel, understandably enraged, sent a message that she would do the same thing to Elijah and more within that same day.*
In this reading, however, we find Elijah frightened, exhausted, and dispirited. He had come back to find the Israelites being unfaithful to the one true God. So Elijah became miserable—in spite of his great triumph. He prayed to God to give immediate death to his worthless self. As despondent people will sometimes do, he went to sleep. He was lying under “a broom tree” (a tall hedge that desert people utilized to shield themselves from the sun in the day and the wind at night).
God could have been harsh to Elijah as a result of this depressed prayer. But instead, a quiet touch from God’s angel awakened the man. The angel whispered, “get up and eat.” And, lo and behold, “there at his head was a hearth cake and a jug of water.”
Elijah did eat and drink, but then settled right back to sleep again. The angel whispered tenderly, “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!” Elijah did and was strengthened. We are witnessing a mother’s care, giving food to the discouraged child (First Reading).
The other readings too are all about God’s kindness even in small things. The Responsorial Psalm invites us to share in the banquet: “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord. … I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.”
In the Gospel, Jesus offers nourishment, and this time the provisions are for a very long journey indeed, the one to eternal life. The people listening (“the Jews,” as John calls them, but really just “the sensible people”) will not have a bit of it. They argue among themselves, ridiculing his silly offer of miraculous food. They “murmur” that they knew his parents, which made him just a local boy acting crazy.
Jesus ordered them to stop grousing and listen. He made the same comparison that we saw last week, between manna that came down from heaven in the desert, and himself, who was “the living bread that came down from heaven.”
Just concentrate on the deliberate kindness of God: feeding the people, giving them drink, pursuing them again and again in order to offer the greatest gift of all, God’s sacrificial love for them. God follows us quietly, gently.
How might we respond? To start with, how about receiving the living bread in Communion? Another way could be to pray on the mellowness of God. Also, by simply slowing down, by stopping the running away and instead letting the Lord find us. God’s kindhearted love, which is also tough, proves to be quite worth the struggle.
Here is how Paul puts it in the Second Reading.
Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.
John Foley, SJ
**From Saint Louis University