“Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!”
These are the words we heard God speak to Elijah when Elijah had grown weak. These words certainly ring true for us as well. In the Eucharist, we receive as Christ said in the gospel, The Bread of Life, love and truth incarnate. It is from this heavenly food that appears as bread, which we receive the strength to carry on the journey.
But what is this journey? The journey we are making is life itself. Elijah, strengthen by the bread and water presented him by the angel of God, traveled 40 days and 40 nights to the Mountain of God, mount Horeb, where Moses had received the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. 40 is a significant number in Sacred Scripture. We hear of the 40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert, the 40 days and 40 nights Our Lord spent in the desert before beginning his public ministry. 40 is a number which always represents a period of purification. Therefore, Elijah, after growing weak and giving into despair, needed this 40 day journey to purify him to encounter God on Mount Horeb.
Similarly, we travel the journey of life and it too is in a sense a period of purification. Life is filled with the dangers of sin, especially the sin of despair which can lead to negligence on our part regarding our faith life.
However, God comes to us, just as he came to Elijah to strengthen and support us. This happens primarily in the Sacraments which He gave to the Church. In every sacrament, is it not the priest or the deacon who is acting, but it is Jesus himself. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation it is not the priest who personally forgives sins, but God Himself in the minister of the priest. That is why in the formula of absolution the priest says: “Through the ministry of the Church…” before forgiving the sins of the penitent. It is through the Church that God acts, not because we chose it to be so, but because He chose it to be so.
In the same way, it is not the priest who consecrates, but Jesus acting through him, which is why the Mass is the perfect form of worship of God on earth. It is our participation in the perfect worship of God the Son offered to God the Father. And it is through this perfect worship that Our Lord feeds us with the Bread of Life, his own flesh in the form of bread and wine.
Jesus tells us in the Gospel passage today that: “Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.” We come first to be healed in the Sacrament of the Reconciliation and placed in right relationship with God, then we come to enter into the worship of the Son to the Father and are fed with the Eucharist in order to be strengthened for the journey toward God.
It is critical that we follow this order. We cannot climb the mountain of God when we are weighed down with our sins. Imagine that our sins are like bricks in a backpack. We carry these around and are trying to climb the mountain to God and cannot even get out of the foothills. When we come to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we are freed to leave that backpack and its contents behind. God forgives us, so we must learn to forgive ourselves. Only then can we be most open to receive the graces Our Lord wishes to give us to nourish us for our journey. I offer you this quotation from St. Ephraem (Deacon in Syria around the 4th Century AD):
"O Lord, we cannot go to the pool of Siloam to which you sent the blind man. But we have the chalice of Your Precious Blood, filled with life and light. The purer we are, the more we receive."
No comments:
Post a Comment