Reading 1
1 Kgs 19:4-8
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.”
He lay down and fell asleep under the broom tree,
but then an angel 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.
After he ate and drank, he lay down again,
but the angel of the LORD came back a second time,
touched him, and ordered,
“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.
Gospel
Jn 6:41-51
The Jews murmured about Jesus because he said,
“I am the bread that came down from heaven, ”
and they said,
“Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph?
Do we not know his father and mother?
Then how can he say,
‘I have come down from heaven’?”
Jesus answered and said to them,
“Stop murmuring among yourselves.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him,
and I will raise him on the last day.
It is written in the prophets:
They shall all be taught by God.
Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.
Not that anyone has seen the Father
except the one who is from God;
he has seen the Father.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever believes has eternal life.
I am the bread of life.
Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died;
this is the bread that comes down from heaven
so that one may eat it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
8/3/09
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I really dig the story from Kings; there's something very mythological about it, or something... Anyhow, one of the interesting things I noticed was that Elijah not only needs food, but also needs to be told to eat again and set off on his journey to the Mountain of God. How typical of our lives, isn't it? When we're moping about stupid stuff God will give us some consolation. But too often we partake of a little of it and, satisfied, we sit down again. But God calls us to do two things: (1) drink more deeply of His blessings, which we have not nearly exhausted and (2) set off on our journey.
ReplyDeleteHere's one of the passages where Jesus is referred to as the son of Joseph, cf. http://guildreview.blogspot.com/2008/12/on-st-joseph.html
Two questions that are bugging me:
(A) What's the connection between the two readings? Ok, there's talk of food in each, but it doesn't seem to be a real strong tie. I trust, however, that the Holy Spirit, working through the Church, has got more than that.
(B) When the crowds ask, "How can he say,
‘I have come down from heaven’?", why does Jesus answer, “Stop murmuring among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day." It doesn't seem like much of an answer. Is He saying the crowds cannot come to Him, because the Father didn't call them (and therefore they should be quiet)? And why mention the resurrection on the Last Day?
re A: The other time in John's Gospel where Jesus is called the son of Joseph was also a time when Moses was referenced (1:45)
ReplyDeletehttp://nasb.scripturetext.com/john/1.htm
That may be some clue
re B: The "murmuring" may have something to do with the dualism between this story and the ongoing references to the account of Moses leading the Israelites/Jews through the dessert--the Jews who were also slow to believe in God's presence among them.