The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B, 11 August 2024
1 Kings 19:4-8 ><}}}}*> Ephesians 4:30-5:2 ><}}}}*> John 6:41-51
Like the Prophet Elijah in the first reading, many times we have found ourselves in the same situation of utter desperation, begging God to take our life to end our sufferings and miseries, crying to Him, “Lord, this is enough!”
Elijah was fleeing from the army of Queen Jezebel out to kill him after the priests of Baal were massacred by the people in a showdown with him in sending fire to their offerings as well as the rains after a long period of drought. He felt a total failure because despite God’s manifestation of powers through him, the Israelites and their King Ahab have refused to be converted to God. And here now is Queen Jezebel making things worst when she vowed to kill him.
Exhausted and deeply discouraged at the turn of things for him, Elijah stopped to rest and lament under the shade of a tree:
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” (1 Kings 19:4).
“This is enough.” It was the same cry of Moses when he felt so bent under the weight of the load God had placed on his shoulders with the people complaining endlessly after their Exodus from Egypt (Num. 10:11-12).
“This is enough.” It was the same cry by Prophet Jeremiah who in his faithfulness to God was subjected to ridicule and persecution by his own people for telling the truth as we heard daily in the first readings of Masses these past two weeks (Jer. 15:10-11; 20:14-15).
“This is enough.” It is also our cry to God like all the other Biblical figures and saints even if we are not going through difficulties not as momentous as theirs. It is a cry that is also a prayer coming from our innermost being when we feel so saddled with no one to unload our woes except to God – who after all is the very reason why we cry!
It is a cry of faith so akin with love because to believe and to love go hand in hand. It is during that moment when we feel like giving up to God, crying “this is enough” when in reality we surrender everything to God because we have been caught up by Him that we cannot resist His attraction. It is that moment when we feel so “fed up with life” but deep inside, we hear God telling us, like Elijah, “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!” (1 Kings 19:7).
Crying “this is enough” is different from murmuring which comes directly from the intellect. It is not coming from the heart that is an outflow of faith and love. To murmur is to reason out and to challenge God and most often our parents and elders.
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? 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 the last day” (John 6:41-44).
When we were growing up as kids, it was a mortal sin to murmur to parents and elders. Most of all, it is not only sinful but also bastos because when we murmur, we dare and challenge God and our elders. Murmuring is a willful act, an activity of the intellect tinged with malice and insubordination as we imply to know better, even superior than others. The murmuring of the people against Jesus was clearly their failure and refusal to see Him as the Christ, regarding Him merely as one of them with an insinuation of how could He speak that way and be better than them.
Our scene is still in Capernaum where the people have caught up with Jesus and His apostles after that feeding of more than five thousand people in the deserted place before the Jewish Feast of Passover. See the exciting progression of Christ’s Discourse on the Bread of Life with the subtle interplay of questions and answers like when Jesus was narrating a parable to the people.
However, here we find Jesus continuing with His discourse by simply declaring Himself as “I am the bread that came down from heaven”. Next week, Jesus will say “I am the living bread that came down from heaven” that would lead the people to quarreling among themselves, not just murmuring! Eventually all these interplay of questions and answers would lead to Jesus challenging the people and us on the last Sunday of this month to either leave or follow Him (August 25, 21st Sunday).
There is no need for Jesus to explain or clarify things as in defending Himself. Clearly, plain and simple, Jesus tells us the truth of Himself as the Bread from Heaven who sustains our life here on earth, precisely more than that bread sent by God to Elijah in the wilderness to continue with his long journey. This requires faith and love on our part.
Jesus is telling us today as He had expressed to the people in Capernaum that there is another dimension, of a higher degree and deeper sense of existence in Him that makes us live forever. When He said “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him”, He was referring to our gift of faith that is akin with love we have mentioned earlier.
But unlike our concept of a gift as being given to a selected few, Jesus here is assuring us all of being gifted with that faith and love. We all have these virtues along with hope that is why we come to the Sunday Mass. Others may have just left these gifts unopened but surely time will come when like Elijah, they will cry out from their hearts “this is enough.”
It is difficult to explain – if it is really possible at all – the deep cause of faith and love except that it is a gift from God. Many times, we may lose faith and love of God but later find them again especially when we are shaken by life-changing moments that may be either good or bad. Just like in falling in love: recall those time when we took some people for granted in our lives only to discover later he or she is the love of your life! Then we become aware of the many reasons beyond explanations why we love them because we are so caught up by that love.
Level up that experience in God when believing in Him is to allow ourselves to be captured or seized by Him who alone is infinitely worthy of love when we say, “ah, basta si Lord iyon!” like Carlo Yulo after winning his two gold medals in the Paris Olympics.
We gather today in this Sunday Mass with all of our cries of surrender and desperations to God, sometimes we murmur but Jesus understands us very well as He continues to give Himself to us in the liturgy of the word and in the Eucharist. You are loved and welcomed to rest inside the church to receive that bread from heaven to enable you to journey farther in life. Let us pray:
God our most loving Father,
let us live in the love
of your Son Jesus Christ
as St. Paul urged us today in
his letter to the Ephesians;
our life is a long march
that is monotonous and even painful;
many times we feel like Elijah
giving up, so fed up in life;
thank You, dear Father
in giving us your Son Jesus
who is more than enough to
strengthen us in this long journey
back to You.
Amen.
