1 Kings 19:4-8 Ephesians 4:30 -- 5:2 John 6:41-51
Today's first reading gives us a picture of Elijah, disillusioned, beaten down. He wants to die. But, then the scripture says, God intervenes. An angel provides food and water and twice encourages him to eat, "else the journey will be too long for you.“ And the scripture tells us that after eating, Elijah was now fortified with enough strength to walk forty days and forty nights.
“Food for the journey” is a title often given to the Eucharist. Our journey is not a trek of forty days and nights. Instead, it is the kind of life Paul describes in the second reading. Our journey is a life lived in love. l. To remove from our hearts bitterness, anger, shouting and malice. To carry in our hearts kindness for one another, compassion and forgiveness. To walk that journey day in and day out requires the kind of stamina Elijah needed…. the kind of strength, the nourishment… that only God's grace can provide.
And so we come each week for strength to live that journey, to celebrate and witness to our commitment and to receive the Eucharist.
Because I routinely sit in the first or second pew it is my privilege to see many of my fellow parishioners in procession to receive communion. I watch them all… the young families bringing toddlers and babes in arms, the elders on canes or walkers, the teenagers and young adults… all journeying to the front of the church for the spiritual nourishment they will need this week. Such good people. Committed to living this Christ-like life. And I am deeply touched and encouraged for my own journey by their witness.
As we continue as companions on this journey, may we, by witness and encouragement, live the life to which we are called by our baptism and fed by the Eucharist.
The world has need of such people.
by: Pat Schnee
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