11 Aug 2024 – 19th Sunday (Year B)

11 Aug 2024 – 19th Sunday (Year B)

(1) 1 Kings 19:4-8

Revived by miraculous food and drink, Elijah reaches the mountain of God

Elijah went a day’s journey into the desert, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

Responsorial: from Psalm 34

R./: Taste and see the goodness of the Lord

I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall be always in my mouth.
Let my soul glory in the Lord;
the lowly will hear me and be glad. (R./)

Glorify the Lord with me,
let us together praise his name.
I sought the Lord, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears. (R./)

Look to him that you may be radiant with joy,
and your faces may not blush with shame.
When the afflicted man called out, the Lord heard,
and from all his distress he saved him. (R./)

The angel of the Lord is encamped
around those who fear him, to deliver them.
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord;
blessed are they who take refuge in him. (R./)

(2) Ephesians 4:30–5:2

Be kind and forgiving towards one another as God is towards us

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Gospel: John 6:41-51

Jesus is manna from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever

The Jews began to complain about Jesus because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise them up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life.

“I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh, for the life of the world.”

BIBLE

Living by this bread

The annual holiday has become standard in our society; it is part of the contract for most jobs and professions, This is topical right now, in the time of the year when holidays are being enjoyed, and because it may help us reflect on what “real living” is and specifically what the link is between the Eucharist and this “real living.” People looks forward to their holidays as the chance to get away, free from the pressures of their work. For a young person it can conjure up all kinds of possibilities of adventure, new experiences, a time to be oneself — or even to find oneself. More settled adults have more limited expectations. The holiday offers less the prospect of new discoveries or experiences, and more the chance for rest, the restoring of flagging energies and perhaps renewing their joyfulness and zest for life. Whether young or old the holidays are a time to be really ourselves and to really live and ideally they help us to live with more zest when we return to “normality.”

This time of leisure is a time for recreating, restoring our lives, ultimately to benefit our living. It is not in itself the object of our life. We do not live in order to have leisure, we have leisure in order to live. This may sound trite but most people feel it when a holiday is too long or perhaps just a little aimless, the idea of endless leisure somehow sounds intolerably boring.

This image of rest and recreation links up with Eucharist and Christian living. In today’s reading, we see Elijah as a man who has had too much of this life and its burdens. His mission to fight against the paganism promoted by Queen Jezebel had sapped his energies and hopefulness, and he wanted out. Unfortunately there was no such thing as a vacation for the prophet, but he did seek rest and renewal by going to the mountain of God, searching for God who alone could give him the renewed faith and courage he needed. It was out there in the wasteland of his life that he found the bread of God which gave him the strength he needed.

Like the adventurous youngster, the tired worker and the jaded prophet, the Christian, too, needs rest and recreation if he or she is to really live the life that God has given us. Today’s second reading has guidelines on what kind of living is involved here. It offers a standard against which we can measure ourselves, to see whether we are really living (in the Christian sense) or not. There are warning lights to show if our spiritual lives are running down or we are becoming dispirited — malice, bitterness, slander. These are forms of weakness which lead us to snap at our neighbour; they are destructive. We can usually rationalise them in terms of the difficulties we are facing, we have suffered disappointments, frustrations of our plans, emotional rejection by others, etc.

Living as a Christian involves trying to make our response to such hardships tune in with the response of Christ himself, For the Christian to “really live” is to live “like Christ” and that means to live “in Christ.” What does this kind living look like? It looks like constant kindness to those around us, constant forgiveness of their annoyances and the ways they reject us, the ability to be tender-hearted towards anyone in need. It is a kind of living to which we would all aspire and even occasionally achieve, but it is a kind of living that needs constant support and nourishment if it isn’t to die out altogether.

The perfect model of this way of living is Christ and he is the only possible source for us, only he can give it to us and nourish it in us. He does this by his giving himself to us in the Eucharist. Here we receive the bread of life, we are united to Christ through our believing in him, listening to his word and receiving his body and blood. If this communion with him is real and not sham then we have his life in us and it must show itself by our leaving Mass every Sunday to go and live like him. Living the Christian life really means living out what we have celebrated in the Eucharist. Equally we need to learn that without this frequent return to the bread of life we will be unable to keep the spirit of Christ alive in our hearts.

Just as we need holidays so we need spiritual recreation. Our Eucharist is a source of re-creation, a source of new life in us. Here we can find new inspiration and vision through the Word of God. Here we can have our faith renewed and we are given the strength to live it out.


Appreciating what we have

We all do our fair share of complaining, and sometimes with good reason. We complain about the weather a great deal. We complain about all kinds of things. If we are not careful we can find ourselves complaining about nothing in particular, just complaining. We can easily get ourselves into a very negative frame of mind. We see the problems but we see nothing else. We fail to see the bigger picture which will nearly always have brighter shades in it. Our vision can restricted to what is wrong or missing or lacking.

The gospel opens with the Jews complaining to each other about Jesus. As far as they were concerned, he was a problem, and they could not see beyond the problem. They had always known him as the son of Joseph, the carpenter from Nazareth; they knew his family and his mother. Yet, here he was claiming to be the bread that came down from heaven. They were scandalized that one of their own could make such claims for himself. Their response to Jesus was to complain about him. Complaining on its own is rarely an adequate response to anything or anyone; it is certainly not an adequate response to the person of Jesus.

Jesus calls for a very different kind of response. He speaks of this response initially as coming to him. To come to Jesus is the first step on the way to faith. In the first chapter of John’s gospel, when Jesus meets the disciples of John the Baptist for the first time he says to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came, they saw, and eventually they went on to believe in him. Jesus’ call to come to him is given even to those who already believe. He calls those who believe to come closer to him so as to believe more fully, more deeply. As followers of Jesus, we spend our whole lives coming to him. We never fully arrive to him in this life; we never fully grasp him, either with our minds or with our hearts. We are always on the way towards him. No matter where we are on our faith journey, the Lord keeps calling on us to come.

Jesus declares in the gospel that nobody can come to him unless drawn by the Father. We cannot come to Jesus on our own; we need God’s help. The good news is that God the Father is always drawing us to his Son. When Jesus says to us, ‘Come’, we are not just left to our own devices at that point. God the Father will be working in our lives helping us to come to his Son; he will draw us to Jesus. There is always more going on in our relationship with Jesus than just our own human efforts. That should give us great encouragement because we know from our experience that our own efforts can fail us in the area of our faith as in other areas. Our coming to Jesus, our growing in our relationship with him, is not all down to us. God the Father is at work in our lives moving us towards his Son, drawing us towards Jesus. There is a momentum within us that is from God, a momentum that will lead us to Jesus if we are in any way open to it.

The language of the gospel is very graphic. Jesus speaks of himself as the bread that comes down from heaven and calls on us to eat this bread. When we hear that kind of language we probably think instinctively of the Eucharist. Yet, it might be better not to jump to the Eucharist too quickly. The Lord invites us come to him and to feed on his presence, and in particular to feed on his word. In the Jewish Scriptures bread is often a symbol of the word of God. We may be familiar with the quotation from the Jewish Scriptures, ‘we do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ We need physical bread, but we also need the spiritual bread of God’s word. We come to Jesus to be nourished by his word. The Father draws us to his Son to be fed by his word. The food of his word will sustain us on our journey through life, just as, in the first reading, the baked scones sustained Elijah, until he reached his destination, the mountain of God. When we keep coming to Jesus and feeding on his word, that word will shape our lives. It empowers us to live the kind of life that Saint Paul puts before us in the second reading, a life of love essentially, a life in which we love one another as Christ as loved us, forgive one another as readily as God forgives us. That, in essence, is our baptismal calling.

One Comment

  1. Thara Benedicta says:

    Key Message:
    Let us Imitate our Lord Jesus in our daily lives!!

    Homily:
    The takeaway from the first reading:
    Testimony: A working professional recalled “I underwent difficult situations in my personal life. The one critical thing I missed doing was depending on God. I regret it.”
    Testimony: I see other ladies who had similar struggles like I have come out successful because they did what Jesus showed them to do. But when Jesus showed me, I didn’t do it.

    Our Lord Jesus has an answer for everything. Today’s first reading is an interesting story. A person prays to die and then goes ahead doing mighty things for Almighty God. The Prophet Elijah did not want to live. His only goal was to die. He was so fed up and broken-hearted that he wanted the Almighty God only to take away his life. He prayed to God to make him die and slept off. But God did not perform any miracles to boost up Elijah back to work. All He provided was only food, good rest and sleep!!

    Like us, Elijah also had a mission to do. He still had work to be completed. He had to go on. Though Elijah wanted to give up and die, God had plans to be executed by Elijah. The time for Elijah to enter his heavenly abode was yet to come. Good food and sleep revived Elijah. Sometimes good food and relaxation will bring us back to action.

    Sometimes, due to pressing situations, we may think of quitting this world on our own. But God has promised, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11.
    God always has plans for our future. If we spoil His plan-A due to our sinful acts like disobedience, then God will come up with another plan, plan-B. No matter how often we spoil God’s plan for us, He will readily forgive and chart a new flourishing plan for us.
    For example, let us consider the life of Samson. Though he had spoiled the plan of God many times, at the last few minutes of his life, God enabled him to fulfill his life’s calling. King David committed adultery and murder. When he repented, God made him fulfil his call.

    In our past we may have spoiled the plans of God. But we should still run to him now. Like the waiting Father of the prodigal son, our Almighty Father will prepare another plan, plan-C which also includes good robes, a gold ring and a bring celebration to celebrate our home coming.

    It is never too late to come back to our calling!!

    The takeaway from the second reading:
    Whenever we gossip or have bitterness in our heart, or engage in long time disputes without coming to peace, we are saddening the Holy Spirit of God. We think that we grieve the Holy Spirit only if we do any big sin. Without our realization, when we gossip about our boss in our break time, when we recall the injustice done to us by someone or when we share angry words, and so on, we are grieving the Holy Spirit of God.
    But when we share words of encouragement, joy, blessing others, we are making the Holy Spirit happy. It’s a simple decision of ours, either to grieve the Holy Spirit or to make Him happy.

    The Apostle Paul asks us to be “Imitators of God”. In the world, we imitate well-known people, whom we have seen through television or any social media. But how do we imitate our Almighty God?
    The Apostle Paul provides the answer also in the same verse. “Live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
    Loving others is the way to imitate the Almighty Father. Our Lord Jesus Christ gave Himself for us, it became a fragrant offering to God. Likewise, whenever we do good to other people, even a kind word (I understand how you feel), or a word of appreciation, they become a fragrant offering to our Almighty God as described in the below verse:
    Philippians 4:18 – “…received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God”. Whenever we do good to others, it becomes a fragrant offering to Almighty God!!

    The takeaway from the Gospel reading:
    Testimony: A wealthy person said, “When I see all that I have and our Lord Jesus hanging on the crucifix, I realise one thing. ‘My Jesus alone satisfies my heart.'”

    Yes, our Lord Jesus can satisfy a longing human heart. There can never be any substitute for Him. There is always an inner joy even in the hardest calamities when our Lord Jesus stays within us.

    Testimony: Few days back, I underwent dark trials in my life. The one thing that helped me through was the thought that ‘God my Father wants me to live happily. So He will surely bring me out of this difficulty’. Whatever may be our trials, our Lord Jesus is sufficient for us.

    Let us consider the happiness when we receive the Bread of life in the Eucharist.
    The happiness of Jesus:
    Let us consider the real-life incident from the life of St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus. When St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus received our Lord during her first Holy Communion, the whole happiness of Heaven came into her heart and she could not contain it. Tears flowed from her heart unable to contain her joy. Jesus was so happy entering the heart of St. Thérèse, that His happiness could not be contained in her heart and so tears overwhelmed with happiness.
    During his life on earth, Jesus was happy to enter the home of anyone who eagerly invited him with a longing heart. Zacchaeus (who climbed the sycamore tree to see Jesus) was longing just to see Jesus, but Jesus surprised Zacchaeus by saying, “I am coming into your house now!” A longing heart is what Jesus craves for!!!

    Securing a place in Heaven:
    At the Last Supper, Jesus took the bread and said, “This is my body, which is given for you.” The body of our loving Lord Jesus was crushed in the winepress of the cross, and His blood oozed out. This is to free us from all our sins and thereby grant us a place in Heaven, to live with Him forever and ever.

    Getting filled by our Lord Jesus Christ:
    The second reading says that we need to be ‘Imitators of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ We need to tune in our soul, body and mind accordingly. Our God has also provided us the nourishment in the following ways:
    Nourishment for Soul – Guidance of the Holy Spirit
    Nourishment for Body – Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Eucharist (Holy Eucharist)
    Nourishment for Mind – Word of God (Holy Bible)
    Nourishment for our Body is provided in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

    By His Blood we are forgiven. By His Stripes we are Healed. We should claim it individually for each one of us.
    Is there any sin too big to be forgiven?
    Is there any sickness too difficult for Him to heal?

    Let us not be in sickness while the stripes of our Lord Jesus are waiting to heal us. His Blood is still flowing out of His heart longing to redeem us. Then why are we confused over what to do? Why are we lamenting and crying? In the parable of the unjust judge our Lord Jesus says (Luke 18:7), “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?” If the unjust judge hears, won’t our loving Father hear? Let us keep praising and thanking our Lord Jesus always. He is our loving bread.

    All the treasures Jesus gained by suffering on the cross are for each one of us. It is not only for a few but for the entire world, including you and me. When Jesus has sacrificed Himself on the cross, will He rethink providing the graces to us?
    Jesus instituted confession followed by communion. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples, before giving them the Holy Eucharist. When the Apostle Peter objected to Jesus washing His feet, Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
    Let Jesus wash our sins. Let us not be late to Mass and miss the “I confess”. Let us do our confession with a contrite heart.

    Tips to be ‘Imitators of God’:
    Actually, we are all far away from being imitators of God. But we will keep taking a step-by-step approach towards it. Jesus is happy and content to see us marching towards imitating Him.

    1. God will refine us, by putting us through the refiner’s fire for a particular quality God wants us to have. The sooner we get purified, the sooner we will come out of the refiner’s fire. If we recall, we will be able to remember such instances in our own life, where God put us into the refiner’s fire and brought us out purified. Every adversity would have moulded us to be a better soul.

    2. We need to have or develop the “Mind of Christ”. Thinking as Jesus thinks will give us clarity for the decisions we need to take in life. For example, if we are not able to pray, then what did Jesus do when people were still with Him, not giving Him solitude? He hurriedly sent them and created time for being alone. He always gave first priority to prayer.

    3. When the disciples had come back after fishing, Jesus cooked fish for them and made them eat. He knew first they would require food for their body more than their soul. Before giving any advice to anyone, let us check if they are in a calm, composed state of mind. If they are in a frustrated mindset, our words will be in vain.

    4. Jesus forgave all the sinners instantly. Though Peter denied Jesus thrice, Jesus never recalled it in His further encounters with the Apostle Peter. Forgiving and not recalling the unkind acts performed by others will help us in imitating Christ.

    5. Choosing battles to fight: When Jesus explained that He is the living bread and His body is the living bread, many people left Him. He did not insist they stay with Him but left them to their own choice. We are also not to change everyone whomsoever we see. Our duty is only to show them the right way of living by our living, by our preaching and duly praying for them. God will transform their heart.

    6. When people wanted to stone the lady who sinned, Jesus grew angry. But He did not shout at them. He kept His silence and looked down and wrote something in the mud. His mind did the job, not His mouth. Jesus did not shout in anger but He calmly handled the situation. He was a ‘shelter’ to the repentant sinner. Let us work with our mind, not with our mouth when in anger.

    7. Jesus eagerly went to anyone’s house who invited Him with a longing heart. He never discriminated against them based on their financial status or social status. To His eyes all were equal. Let us also respect people without discriminating against them based on their financial or social status.

    Imitations of Christ by Thomas A Kempis is a good guidebook for our transformation.
    All of us are called to “Imitate our Lord Jesus Christ” in our lives. If all of us imitate Christ in our daily life, the whole world would embrace ‘Christianity’.

Join the Discussion

Keep the following in mind when writing a comment

  • Your comment must include your full name, and email. (email will not be published). You may be contacted by email, and it is possible you might be requested to supply your postal address to verify your identity.
  • Be respectful. Do not attack the writer. Take on the idea, not the messenger. Comments containing vulgarities, personalised insults, slanders or accusations shall be deleted.
  • Keep to the point. Deliberate digressions don't aid the discussion.
  • Including multiple links or coding in your comment will increase the chances of it being automati cally marked as spam.
  • Posts that are merely links to other sites or lengthy quotes may not be published.
  • Brevity. Like homilies keep you comments as short as possible; continued repetitions of a point over various threads will not be published.
  • The decision to publish or not publish a comment is made by the site editor. It will not be possible to reply individually to those whose comments are not published.