19th Sunday 2015
Robert VerEecke, S.J.
How are you? How are you feeling today? Are you feeling just fine? Or are
you weighed down by some anxieties or troubles? Are you filled with
energy or feeling drained? Are you grateful for the people in your life or are
you frustrated with them? Are you feeling satisfied with your life or are you
hungry for something more?
That’s a lot of questions to ask you to ponder this afternoon. But however
you are and whoever you are the word of God may just have something to
say to you. The scriptures today are laid out before us like a great feast, a
buffet line, a smorgasbord where you can pick and choose, taste and see how
God wants to feed you. The overall theme of the readings is in fact being
fed, God’s desire to feed you.
So if you are exhausted, drained, lifeless, even despairing, taste and see the
goodness of the Lord to the prophet Elijah. He has been running for his life,
fleeing from Jezabel, the wife of King Ahab. He doesn’t want to run
anymore. He just wants to die and have an end to it all. He is simply
exhausted. He can’t deal with anything more. Maybe you know someone
who could take the place of Elijah under the broom tree? Maybe even you
are feeling that way?
In the story, however, God cares for Elijah through the ministry of an
“angel”, a messenger who does not give Elijah a lecture about how grateful
he should be or tell him to look for the silver lining: he simply is given food
and sleep, the essentials of life, strength for the journey. We all might ask
ourselves: who are the “angels” in our lives? Who are the people who help
us get through times in our lives when we are simply overwhelmed?
If you are feeling wonderful today, just happy to be alive on a beautiful
summer’s day, grateful for family, friends, good food, can you savor the
words of today’s psalm: Taste and See the Goodness of the Lord? The
psalmist knows that God is the source of his joy, his relief from pain and
troubles: “I called to the Lord and he answered me, from all my troubles
God set me free.” Are you here today feeling just fine because you
recognize the many good gifts God has given you?
If you are feeling frustrated in your relationships with family and/or friends,
with one person in particular, can you taste and see the words of St. Paul to
the Ephesians?
All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be
removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one
another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has
forgiven you in Christ.
No, it is not easy to be in relationship with another. Our patience can be
tested. People may “get on our nerves”, but that’s not how we are called to
live as Christians. If this is where you are in your life, can you ask for the
grace to see the good in the other? Can you ask for patience, ask to be kind,
gentle and forgiving?
So how do you feel? Are you tasting and seeing the Goodness of the Lord
who desires to feed your spirit, to lift you up if you are cast down, to rejoice
with you in gratefulness?
As you know, feelings can easily change. They can be affected by the
weather, by a news report, by a kind word, by a traffic jam. Our feelings can
be very ephemeral. Here today, gone tomorrow. Something can happen that
turns our mourning into dancing. Something can happen that overwhelms us
with gratitude. Something can happen that helps us to be kind and forgiving
and resolve our differences.
But the more existential question that comes from today’s readings is: How
are you? How is your existence a reflection, an imitation, of the God who is
love, God who shares his life with us in the Eucharist? For the past two
weeks we have been hearing the Bread of Life discourse from John. And
that is certainly about the physical, tangible, edible bread of life which we
are gifted to receive in the Eucharist. But it is also about the person of Jesus
who draws us to himself, who wants us to find life’s meaning, “the How of
Life” through him and with him and in him. Our feelings can change with
life’s circumstances but the substance and meaning of the “bread of our lives”
is found in Jesus.