19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B<\/a>
\n1 Kings 19:4-8
\nEphesians 4:30-5:2
\nJohn 6:41-51
\nAugust 5, 2012<\/p>\nElijah has apparently decided to give up but why?<\/p>\n
If you go back and read the whole story, you will see this comes shortly after the famous story of Elijah\u2019s \u201cbattle\u201d with the\u00a0prophets of Baal.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, Elijah wins because he is a prophet of the true God.\u00a0 But right after that Jezebel, wife of King Ahab sets out to have Elijah killed.\u00a0 So, he is fleeing for his life.<\/p>\n
That brings us to today\u2019s passage.\u00a0 Elijah is hiding.\u00a0 He thinks that there is nothing more he can do.\u00a0 But God sends the angel to feed him and Elijah is strengthened for a forty day journey to Mount Horeb.<\/p>\n
This was not ordinary food that God offered to Elijah.\u00a0 Elijah was really down and God offered him this great food.<\/p>\n
God offers us a great food.\u00a0 It is the Bread of Life, the Body and Blood of Jesus, the precious gift of the Eucharist.<\/p>\n
We come here today seeking the Bread of Life.\u00a0 We each come from wherever we are at in our lives.\u00a0 Things might be going great.\u00a0 Or things might not be good and that might be why we are here.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
When things are going great, we can come to give thanks.\u00a0 When things are bad, that can be exactly what draws us to Jesus.\u00a0 When things are bad, we come to realize how much we need God.<\/p>\n
Whatever our circumstances, God is with us.\u00a0 God offers us the Bread of Life.\u00a0 It is the food that nourishes our souls.\u00a0 It is the Body of Christ.<\/p>\n
We might ask how what looks like bread and wine be the Body and Blood of Jesus.\u00a0 It can be hard to understand.<\/p>\n
It reminds of the disciples who heard Jesus say, \u201cI am the bread that comes down from Heaven.\u201d\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t understand how Jesus could be the \u201cbread that comes down from Heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, surprisingly, it wasn\u2019t the bread part that they struggled with first.\u00a0 They knew Jesus as the son of Mary and Joseph.\u00a0 They knew he had been born into humanity just like everyone else.\u00a0 So, for Jesus to say he came down from Heaven would be impossible.\u00a0 Humans didn\u2019t come down from Heaven.\u00a0 Angels yes, people no.<\/p>\n
So, they struggled with what he said and it will only get more difficult for them to understand what he is saying as we go on to hear the rest of the Bread of Life Discourse over the next two weeks.<\/p>\n
To be Catholic isn\u2019t always easy.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t always popular.\u00a0 Believing in God doesn\u2019t make us the \u201cin crowd.\u201d\u00a0 How many different prophets are the Old Testament were persecuted for preaching God\u2019s truth because the people didn\u2019t want to hear it.<\/p>\n
Elijah might have been wondering why God allowed Jezebel to try to kill him.\u00a0 Of course, in the end she did not succeed!<\/p>\n
Jesus could have wondered, no not that he could have wondered, he did wonder why he had to suffer persecution and Crucifixion.\u00a0 Of course, Jesus knew the answer, because he loved us and to redeem us out of his love he accepted his suffering even though it made no sense in human terms.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t understand why some things are the way they are.\u00a0 We don\u2019t understand everything God tells us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But we can believe!<\/p>\n
We believe that God is all-knowing and all-powerful.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We believe God loves us and cares for us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We believe that Jesus died for us.<\/p>\n
We believe that Jesus is the Bread of Life.<\/p>\n
We believe that we receive the Bread of Life, the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist.\u00a0 We don\u2019t understand but we believe because Jesus said ‘This is my body’ and\u00a0‘This is my blood’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here is this week’s homily from the Bread of Life Discourse 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B 1 Kings 19:4-8 Ephesians 4:30-5:2 John 6:41-51 August 5, 2012 Elijah has apparently decided to give up but why? If you go back and read the whole story, you will see this comes shortly after the famous …<\/p>\n
Continue reading ‘Homily #3 of 5 – Bread of Life Discourse’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-cN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":794,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793\/revisions\/794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}