Food for the Journey

When my Dad was dying in Sacred Heart Hospice in Sydney, I was fortunate to be there with my family. As we gathered around him to give him the last rites, one of us read from the Books of Kings about Elijah under the furze bush, the reading we have just heard. What made it important for a dying man and his family is that it summarised his approach to life and death.  My Dad, like most of us, did his best to follow God throughout his life. Like most of us, he was aware faults and of the inadequacies of his efforts to lead an authentic Christian life. He knew that he could not make it on his own, but was tempted to think that he could, so he spent many hours, most hours in fact, of the latter part of his illness praying for perseverance. He knew the journey that lay ahead, and he knew that he needed God to accompany him.

This is the process of Christian maturity. We can’t do it on our own, we are not masters of our own destiny, we cannot do, as some new age thinking suggests, whatever we dream to by our own strength.

Elijah was depressed. Thinking he could conquer the world by himself, he suddenly realised that he was not omnipotent, he was no better than the generations before him. Elijah has been let down by the new age of his time. He was unable to admit his need for God, but God intervened anyway. God gave him food for the journey, and together, they were able to reach the destination, the Holy Mountain of Horeb.

Just like my Dad, Elijah was drawn towards God and was then able to move forward in partnership. Similarly strengthened by the sustenance offered through the Holy Spirit we are called to eternal life. Eternal life does not begin when we die, but it begins when we acknowledge the power of God in our lives. Jesus calls us to celebrate this through the Eucharist, the living bread that is him who has come down from heaven. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, he says, so that a man may eat it and may not die.

Today we celebrate the faith that we have but cannot see, but which we know through faith. In this Year of Grace we ask for our hands, eyes, ears, hearts and minds to be opened to see, taste, feel, smell, touch and experience God who is incarnate in our world. It is our window to eternal life. We try, as St Paul urges us, to imitate God as children that he loves. We do this together, just as many of us will together come to the altar to share communion and be able to repeat the psalmist: Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Homily 19^th Vigil of the 19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, OLQP, Broome, 11^th August 2012.