19th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B (11 August 2024)

Biblical references: 

First reading: "By the power of that food he walked up to the mountain of God" (1 Kings 19:4-8)

Responsorial Psalm: "Taste and see how good the Lord is" (Psalm 33/34 2-3,4-5) 

Second Reading: "Walk in charity like Christ" (Eph 4,30-5,2)

Gospel: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven" (Jn 6:411-51)

1. God never leaves us alone. In the first reading we meet the prophet Elijah, Eliyyah meaning "My God is Yah" first syllable of God's name. A name that indicates well his characteristics as a prophet who fought a relentless battle against idolatry. At a certain point, however, he felt his strength waning, a situation that can happen to anyone, and being left alone and abandoned by all, he went into the desert in despair to escape Queen Jezebel who wanted to kill him. Drought, famine, loneliness, physical and moral exhaustion: the desert mirrored his inner emptiness made more acute by the fear of death. But God did not abandon him and his flight turned into a pilgrimage to the source of the Jewish faith, Mount Sinai, also called Horeb. God draws him to the Mountain of the Covenant, where he once called Moses (Ex 3) to deliver to him the tablets of the law (Ex 19) and showed him in the darkness of a cave his mysterious radiance (Ex 33:21-23). From that encounter was born the Jewish people liberated from Egyptian slavery, a metaphor for all slavery. In that same place, the new birth will take place for Elijah as the great prophet of Israel. We will get to know all this better with the miracles performed in the house of the widow of Sarepta (1 R 17:7-24) in the next XXXII Sunday of Ordinary Time, today instead we stay with Elijah, who after a day's journey tired and desperate doubts even himself because he becomes aware of his unworthiness. God does not leave him alone and an angel gives him bread, water and above all comfort from Heaven to understand the meaning of his mission. If until then he had defended an all-powerful God who destroys his enemies and had challenged him on Mount Carmel against the 450 priests of Baal, now to discover the true face of God he will have to enter the same cavern of Horeb where Moses saw the Lord: only then will Elijah also understand that the God of Love is not revealed in the hurricane, the earthquake and the fire, but in the murmur of a gentle breeze (1 R 19:12). The first reading today describes her journey of forty days and forty nights to prepare for this encounter. In the Bible, the number forty always indicates a gestation, and what the prophet went through recalls our personal experience: to be born again, one must pass through the desert and receive as a gift the bread and water that restore life when one feels abandoned and lost on the brink of suicide, despair, enslaved to sin and marked by all kinds of physical and moral suffering. Elijah believed himself to be privileged because he was called by God, now he discovers that the prophet is one like the others to whom God entrusts a mission far beyond his strength: he experiences, however, that the Lord does not abandon anyone and there are no situations that escape the power of his mercy. This is echoed in the responsorial psalm: "the poor man cries out and the Lord hears him, rescues him from all his distress" (Psalm 33/34).

2. From here comes an invitation for all: every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we hear the Lord whispering in our hearts: 'Rise up and eat, for long is the road ahead of you'.   

The inner unease of the prophet Elijah appears, albeit in a different context, in the restlessness of Jesus' listeners in the synagogue of Capernaum. Last Sunday, his discourse had stopped at these words: "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall never hunger", expressions that sounded strange and aroused perplexity and criticism in his listeners. The Jewish people knew well that there are two kinds of bread: material bread and spiritual bread, and they knew that the only spiritual bread is the word of God, as we read in Deuteronomy: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Deut 8:3).  Understandable then the people's question: How can Jesus claim to be the word of God? How can he claim to be the one who brings eternal life, he who is the son of Joseph, a carpenter from Nazareth, and Mary a simple woman from the village? He is one like us and claims to consider himself God? To tell the truth, anyone who stops at Jesus' claims cannot but find them at first sight difficult to understand and accept. No wonder then that, as we will read in the coming Sundays, some of those present abandoned him. The listeners were peasants from Galilee accustomed to having their feet on the ground, worshipping one God and therefore enemies of idolatry. Jesus provokes them and provokes us with a question that touches the heart of Christianity: can Jesus man be God?  Question, the heart of the Christian faith that always questions and awaits a personal answer. Jesus perceives the mumbling of the people as a refusal to believe and reacts forcefully: "do not murmur among yourselves". This command on Jesus' lips recalls the severe rebuke related to unbelief, the original sin of Israel, which murmured and rebelled against God and Moses in the desert during the forty years of the exodus. It is the temptation of every believer. But Jesus continues his discourse with patient pedagogy and reiterates one after the other the fundamental points of his revelation: Yes, I am the word of God, I am the one who gives eternal life, I am the Son of God, and in confirmation he refers to the prophets who had assured: "And all shall be taught of God".

3. Yes, 'I am the bread of life' and he adds: 'this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that whoever eats of it will not perish'. The mistrust, doubts and murmurings of the listeners and even of the disciples also affect us - we should not be surprised - because to overcome the scandal of the incarnation, of Christ's death on the cross, it is indispensable to humbly listen to the voice of the Spirit who invites us to always and totally trust in God: We are saved only by God. All this is the mystery of the 'Eucharistic bread', the real presence of divine life in Jesus Christ, the presence of the Holy Trinity. If faith does not open the heart to humbly listening to the Holy Spirit, we risk reducing it all to a liturgical rite that we simply call 'the Mass'.  St John does not recount the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper and replaces it with the prophetic gesture of the washing of the feet, making clear the inseparable link that unites the Eucharist to the New Commandment of love and service. Some say that it is more important to do good to others than to attend Mass. Beware lest we lose sight of the fact that the fullness of evangelical love linked to the Eucharistic mystery must never be reduced to charitable, social and solidarity work. Only the faithful sharing in the Eucharist of the 'bread of life' that is God himself Love who gives himself freely opens the Christian's heart to the total gift of love.  But it can happen that we approach the celebration of the Eucharist thinking we are sharing a religious rite without understanding that instead it is welcoming into our poor existence the One who is the glory of God and the salvation of the world.  When we gather on Sunday it is not to do the most beautiful and important prayer together, but for something else: we participate in a real and living way in the very life of God - the Trinity. We can say that there is the Eucharist, Body of Christ, because the Holy Spirit "transfigures" the bread and wine into the identity of Jesus Christ, the same Spirit that Jesus with his "authority" sends for this transformation. If Jesus did not send the Spirit, the bread and wine would remain as they are; and if the Spirit were not present, no power could replace it, because Jesus' power is signified and activated by the Holy Spirit. When Christ is separated from his Spirit, the plan of God the Trinity Mercy is dissolved. In the Christian tradition, Christ and the Spirit are held closely together for the understanding of the Eucharist. And the heart of the Eucharistic celebration is sealed by the celebrant praying thus: 'Through Christ, with Christ and in Christ to you, God the Father Almighty in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honour and glory for ever and ever'.   The final Amen of the whole assembly is indispensable because it is a solemn and much needed proclamation of assent and consent: it is the signature that allows us to contemplate the glory of God through Jesus. St Jerome said that the Amen resounds like thunder from heaven (from the "Dialogues against the Luciferians", in Latin: "Dialogus contra Luciferianos).

• +Giovanni D’Ercole

P.S. The Apostle Paul invites us in the second reading from the Epistle to the Ephesians to be imitators, that is, friends of God (Eph 5:1), and this imitation is none other than our identification with Christ: as Christ loved us, "walk in charity". Linking this to the words of Jesus in Capernaum, we understand that no one can understand the Eucharist unless they are instructed and drawn by God's love. We read in the gospel: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him" (Jn 6:44).  God alone knows God and that is why Jesus says that one must be instructed by God's light to enter into the mystery of the bread of life.  The Eucharist is the sign par excellence of God's covenant with humanity, it is the original expression of his love, realised by Jesus in human flesh like ours. Love indicated by the offering and sacrifice of his body and blood, celebrated every time we remember the death and resurrection of the One whom in hope we await to come in glory.