Life is hard, isn’t it? It’s messy. It’s complicated, and it never seems to get any easier either. When we are little, we think if we can get old enough to make our own decisions, everything will be better. Then as teenagers, we think, “once I get out on my own and make enough money, I’ll be happy.” Then we spend decades working for one goal after another, ticking off the list of things we “need” to make us happy. Finally, as we get older, we wonder if retirement will be the magical age when things fall into place. Then retirement comes along, and we find ourselves busy with new things, new responsibilities, and tougher challenges. Sometimes it makes us want to give up.
That place of darkness where we want to give up, that despair is where we find Elijah in today’s Gospel. He’s running for his life. Jezebel wants to kill him and has threatened to do so. So Elijah, losing all hope, lays down to die and says, “Just get it over with God!” But God doesn’t work like that. God doesn’t want to take our life; He wants to help us thrive and grow into the person He created us to be. So instead of taking Elijah’s life, God provided him food and water. Under the shelter of the broom tree, Elijah found life, not death. Then it says after eating, he was “strengthened by that food, [and ] he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God.
That phrase we see there, forty days and forty nights, is used to mean “enough.” Elijah was strengthened enough for the entire journey. It means a “complete” amount of time. God didn’t just give Elijah enough for part of the journey, but enough to go where He needed and do everything He needed to do. When God provides us sustenance, it isn’t lacking. It has everything we need to overcome all the struggles of life.
Then the church pairs this story about Elijah with the Gospel message from Jesus that openly declares Jesus to be the bread from Heaven. He doesn’t mince words here. The mana the Israelites ate in the desert was enough for that journey. The bread Jesus offers us is the bread that will sustain us for eternity. This chapter of John is called the bread of life discourse, and it’s the foundation of why we are here today in this room celebrating the Mass. The bread from Heaven is the Eucharist. It is the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. It’s not just a symbol, but the very being of God Himself made present for us by the words and in the hands of our priests.
We, as Catholics, focus our lives on the Eucharist and the Sacraments. At the age of reason, we initiate our children into this mystery to receive the strength they need to grow into the faith. We try to begin each marriage with a Mass so that the marriage of a man and woman begins with God feeding them for the journey as their first official act as a married couple. That’s also why we try to make sure that each Catholic receives viaticum before death. Food for the journey. What else could contain enough energy to transport someone on a journey from this life to the presence of God Himself?
That doesn’t mean that life will magically get easier. It also doesn’t mean that all the pressures and challenges we faced before gathering here will disappear. Life is still going to have its challenges, its ups, and its downs. But, in the Eucharist, received worthily, we find the grace we need for the journey and the true source of happiness. The strength and confidence of knowing that Jesus is going with us by our side. When our identity is rooted in Him, we find the fortitude necessary to get up from that pit of despair and put one foot in front of the other until we, like Elijah, arrive at the mountain of God.
The beauty of it is this: The Catholic church and the catholic church alone provides this food for us every day, and through the authority established by Jesus Christ Himself, we are given more than we’ll ever need for this earthly journey, overflowing with a grace that lasts longer than time itself. The Eucharist sustains our spiritual lives. When we come up to receive communion, remember that we aren’t just performing some old ritual established two thousand years ago. Rather we are being nourished by God, Himself! Our souls are being fed with the new mana, the new bread from Heaven. Just like the Israelites were sustained physically by the mana they found on the desert floor, we are being sustained for our lives here in this world. As one writer put it,
“[The Eucharist] strengthens us to live as faithful Christians in a hostile world, making sure that we remain connected to the source of all holiness and spiritual strength, Jesus Christ. Simply put, the Eucharist is food for our journey home, food that helps us to survive the hostile desert of this world and arrive safely at our heavenly homeland.1”
A reflection on the readings for the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 8, 2021
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(The Eucharist, Our Food for the Journey. https://catholicexchange.com/eucharist-food-journey)