Christ Resurrected,
Unknown Gothic Master, c. 1450
(Burgenländisches Landesmuseum, Eisenstadt)

Readings
1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:2-9
Ephesians 4:30-5:2
John 6:41-51

Chants

Sometimes we feel like Elijah in today’s First Reading. We want to lie down and die, keenly aware of our failures, that we seem to be getting no better at doing what God wants of us.

We can be tempted to despair, as the prophet was on his forty-day journey in the desert. We can be tempted to “murmur” against God, as the Israelites did during their forty years in the desert (see Exodus 16:2,7,8; 1 Corinthians 10:10).

The Gospel today uses the same word, “murmur,” to describe the crowds, who reenact Israel’s hardheartedness in the desert.

Jesus tells them that prophecies are being fulfilled in Him, that they are being taught by God. But they can’t believe it. They can only see His flesh, that He is the “son” of Joseph and Mary.

Yet if we believe, if we seek Him in our distress, He will deliver us from our fears, as we sing in today’s Psalm.

At the altar in every Eucharist, the angel of the Lord, the Lord himself (see Exodus 3:1-2), touches us. He commands us to take and eat His flesh given for the life of the world (see Matthew 26:26).

This taste of the heavenly gift (see Hebrews 6:4-5) comes to us with a renewed command —to get up and continue on the journey we began in baptism, to the mountain of God, the kingdom of heaven.

He will give us the bread of life, the strength and grace we need—as He fed our spiritual ancestors in the wilderness and Elijah in the desert.

So let us stop grieving the Spirit of God, as Paul says in today’s Epistle, in another reference to Israel in the desert (see Isaiah 63:10). 

Let us say to God as Elijah did, “Take my life.” Not in the sense of wanting to die. But in giving ourselves as a sacrificial offering—loving Him as He has loved us, on the cross and in the Eucharist.

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Saint Cyril of Alexandria
from Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel, 22

How could man, who remained riveted to the earth and subject to death, gain entry to immortality once more? His flesh had to become assimilated to the life-giving force in God. Now, God the Father's life-giving force is his Word, his only Son, and so it was he whom God sent to us as Savior and Redeemer...

If you put a breadcrumb into oil, water or wine, it at once soaks up their properties. If you place iron into contact with fire, it will shortly become full of its energy and, even though by nature it is only iron, will take on the appearance of fire. In the same way, then, God's life-giving Word, by uniting himself to the flesh he assumed, caused it to become life giving.

Did he not say: "Whoever believes in me has eternal life. I am the bread of life." And again: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh... Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you." So then, by eating the flesh of Christ, the Savior of us all, and drinking his blood we have life in ourselves, we become one with him, we remain in him and he in us.

Therefore it is for him to enter within us in a way fitting to God, by the Holy Spirit, and to mingle with our body, after a fashion, through the holy flesh and precious blood we receive as life-giving blessing as if in bread and wine. Indeed..., God has exercised his condescension towards our weakness and placed all his life-force into the elements of bread and wine, which are thus endowed with the spirit of his own life. So don't hesitate to believe in it for our Lord himself has clearly said: "This is my body" and "This is my blood."