August 8 - 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading I: 1 Kings 19:4-8
Responsorial Psalm: 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Reading II: Ephesians 4:30-5:2
Gospel: John 6:41-51

Elijah, in despair asked God to take his life. Elijah wanted to give up; God had other plans. Elijah found his weary, worn out spirit nourished and refreshed by God’s angel. God sure did take Elijah’s life but not in the way Elijah expected or thought possible. God changed Elijah, strengthened him and gave him the ability to walk forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God. God does the same for each one of us. Think of the obstacles you have encountered; think of what you have overcome. God had a lot to do with each effort you made to persevere, to, as the late Congressman John Lewis said, “make good trouble” for what is right, for what is needed for the common good.

In our need we have often prayed and like the psalmist, God has delivered us from fear and distress.

Our second reading today, from Ephesians, insists that all bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, malice and reviling must be stopped or transformed or removed from our behavior patterns. We are to be kind and compassionate, forgiving one another as God forgives us. Easier said than done but well worth practicing because in our every effort to be kind, God is doing the heavy lifting. In our every effort to be compassionate, the Holy Spirit is doing the work. In our every effort to be forgiving, Jesus is holding us up, embracing us, loving us, modeling for us more forgiveness that we can fathom. Every time we replace bitterness with hopefulness we are imitating God as a child imitates a parent or older sibling. Every time we replace fury with forgiveness we are imitating Jesus forgiving the woman who washed his feet and dried them with her hair. Every time we replace anger, shouting, reviling and malice with compassion we realize we’re not alone in our efforts. Grace must be kicking in; on our own we might be snarky. And that grace flows like a fountain of love, changing us to live in love. We’ve seen it in our own families:

· The four year old who wanted all her sister’s birthday presents and everyone’s attention all the time is now the gracious twenty four year old, loving her work, calling her grandma from far away, and caring for a cat whose owner had to go into rehab in order to stop drinking herself to death.

· The three year old who terrified a gentle old English setter became a seventy three year old who found jobs for all twenty two of his employees after his restaurant and home burned to the ground in a California wildfire.

Yes, we do change. Don’t write anyone off; God helps us change.

Jesus’ neighbors “murmured” about him because they simply could not grasp what Jesus meant when he said he was bread from heaven. In today’s Gospel from John, that the whole church prays with today, Jesus tells them to stop murmuring and says his Father draws us to him and he will raise us up on the last day. Jesus also tells us he is the Bread of Life, the living bread, bread Jesus gives us for the life of the world.

Jesus invites us to be so nourished by his life and message that we do what the letter to the Ephesians said, we become imitators of Christ who gave himself to God by giving himself to others, by being flesh for the life of the world. We’re tempted to murmur “how can this be?” as it is easier than praying and believing. Today’s Sacred Scriptures also dare us to risk an encounter with the living God who answers our every prayer. Not always the way we want or expect; God does answer prayer in ever-new, mind-and-soul-transforming ways.

In Jesus’ death Jesus gave his whole flesh for the life of the world and he gives us the Bread of Life whenever we celebrate the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper.

By Dr. Deni Mack, Pastoral Associate Emerita