ENOUGH? – 19th Sunday Ordinary Time, Year B
In just a short time, insufficient food and sleep can bring us to the point of physical exhaustion. Moral, emotional, relational, and social problems can bring us to the point of spiritual exhaustion. In the First Book of Kings (29: 4-8), we read of Elijah the Prophet’s experience of despair and exhaustion. He was fleeing into the desert for his life. Jezebel had attached the prophet’s work of calling the people of Israel back to God. Elijah in despair asked God to take his life. “Elijah went a day’s journey into the desert, until he came to a broom tree and sat beneath it. He prayed for death, saying: ‘This is enough, O Lord! Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers’.” Overcome with fatigue, he fell asleep. A messenger “…touched him and ordered him to get up and eat. Elijah looked and there at his head was a hearth cake and a jug of water”.
When in circumstances of spiritual and emotional exhaustion and discouragement, we need to take the same counsel. “He got up, ate and drank”. For the messenger told him: “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you! …then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb”. This is a story of hope, renewal, and restoration. The desert experience of eating, walking, praying and being in the presence of God, rebuilt Elijah and prepared him to go back to his difficult prophetic ministry to Israel.
We would say that Elijah suffered what is called today “burn out”, which is a loss of energy and motivation for living one’s life or doing one’s work. It is little wonder that many collapse physically, emotionally, and spiritually because they take so little sustaining food and receive so little support from others. Many refuse to take spiritual nourishment in the form of prayer, consuming the Bread of God’s Word, and the Eucharist. Many refuse to take time out to be renewed and continue fighting battles with themselves and others, which in time can weaken and even break the person’s health. Many refuse to follow the ordinary health rules for keeping and preserving spiritual, emotional, and physical health through good relationships with people, proper rest, exercise and eating. Many destroy their health through smoking, unbalanced diets, misuse of drugs, and lack of exercise. Many allow sin to weaken them spiritually and refuse to go the way of repentance, reparation, confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
This saddens the Holy Spirit, who relies on humans to be the instruments for God’s works. Continual renewal and restoration of our persons keeps them in good shape to be the instruments of the Holy Spirit. Any instrument we value for some work, our cars, houses, machines, equipment, we service regularly and keep in good working order so that they can serve us. We should especially look to the care of our human persons, keeping them as ready and able instruments for the work of the Holy Spirit in us and through us. People who care for others, such as parents, often take care of themselves, not for themselves, but for others.
In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul urges us to take care of our persons. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption.” Then he goes on to tell us what can wear us down, destroy our hope and joy, and make us less able to be used by the Spirit. “All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice.” Any one of these can eat at our insides and weaken us against the enemies of Christ. These need to be replaced with attitudes and ways which will strengthen our persons spiritually, morally, emotionally and physically. “And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.” This is the way to spiritual health and recovery from despair and discouragement. “So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us…”
The power of Jesus to love made Him the healthiest person who ever lived. We can only be healthy in our total persons to the extent we are imitating His life in our own. Only by consuming His food can we have the strength and the courage to follow His way. “I am the bread that came down from heaven…” Jesus teaches. We need His Spiritual Bread. Our spiritual hungers need to be met as well as our physical hungers for us to maintain our natural and supernatural life. The physical hungers for food, water, love and belonging have their spiritual counterparts. They are used in the scriptures as signs and reminders and teachers of our unseen spiritual needs. Jesus spoke to the emotionally and spiritually thirsty Samaritan woman at the well about the life giving spring of the Holy Spirit who would fulfill her deeper thirsts. He spoke to the disciples about the spiritual food of doing God’s will. He told the hungering crowds about their spiritual need for the imperishable bread of eternal life. Our human needs for love and belonging can tell us about our need for God who is love, and remind us of having an inheritance in the Lord’s Kingdom forever.
If we are running low on joy and hope and power in our lives, it could be we need to take Elijah’s counsel and example and consume spiritual food. “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you! He got up, ate and drank; then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.” The food we have in Jesus as our Bread of Life is even greater in the New Testament. “…whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
Do I consume enough of the Lord’s Word and the Eucharist, which is the Bread of Life, so that I can make the journey of life in joy and hope, and be an instrument of His Holy Spirit? Do I know the meaning of the Psalm; “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord”?
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