Homily: Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Year B - Sunday, 11 August 2024
Prologue: It's important to believe that God is continually at work, trying to sustain us in all our needs. For example, we look at the way God sent an angel to Elijah to touch him and give him a simple scone and some water in order to sustain him on his difficult journey to the mountain of God. I believe that in so many simple and everyday ways, God sends us angels.
In the people and events and opportunities of life, which are meant to sustain us and nurture us and encourage us on our way, especially when we're struggling along that journey. And God gives us the Eucharist as the perfect food for our spiritual journey as disciples of Jesus. It's not an easy path to follow, but it is the path of life.
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In the readings this weekend, we see more examples of people losing hope and starting to complain and giving up. Whilst the Lord is continuously shown offering new strength and feeding the starving, encouraging those who are downcast, challenging us and willing us to keep trusting, keep walking humbly in God's abundant care and providence.
To sustain us, God gives us his life-giving word, as well as his very self. In the Eucharist, God showers us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit to give us the grace to be the people of God that God is calling us to be and to become what God intends. God even sends us angels, in the broadest sense of that word, agents of God's grace, instruments of God's love, to encourage us, to nourish us, to refresh us in times of struggle and doubt.
This weekend's readings are inspiring and beautiful and they continue that clear Eucharistic theme from the Gospel. Without any doubt, our Lord is being very clear, Jesus is the true bread that has come down from heaven. He is the bread of life.
Anyone who eats this bread from heaven will have eternal life. Jesus gives us true nourishment to continue the path of life as disciples. There's a line in the first reading that really strikes me.
The prophet Elijah is physically, spiritually and emotionally exhausted. He's ready to give up. It all seems too much, too hard.
So God sends an angel to help him. The angel gently wakes him up and twice says to him, get up and eat or the journey will be too long for you. I think that's very telling.
Following God is a difficult and challenging path. It's not a very easy path, even if it is the path of life. It is possible with God's help to complete this journey of discipleship and follow that path that God has set for us.
But it needs the training of an athlete, and it needs nourishment and strength from God along that way. What this is saying is you will not be strong enough. You will certainly not be resilient enough and nourished enough unless you take the support and nourishment that God asks you and offers you.
This is our task as well as God's gift. Our Lord said a similar thing to his apostles when he was teaching them. Pray, fast, stay watchful or you will come into the time of trial.
Even they didn't fully listen to him and some of them stumbled badly. But our Lord helped them back up again. Even the night before Jesus died, he said, pray that you may be given the strength to face this trial.
But they fell asleep and didn't take his advice. If we think we can be effective disciples of Jesus who do what Jesus wants and not merely what we might want and if we think we can do the task of discipleship that Jesus has set, each and every one of us, without making use of the nourishment that Jesus gives us, we're kidding ourselves. The nourishment our Lord gives us is regular Eucharist and regular nourishment and challenge from listening to God's living word in the scriptures.
This is the nourishment we need to take, that we have regular prayer life too, both in the community and also privately. Both are essential. Private prayer, public worship, lest one or the other become stagnant and cut off from the wider picture.
The food we need to take, lest the journey will certainly be too arduous for us, is the support and challenge of the community of faith and also the nourishment from Christ's word and sacrament and also the nourishment and example of his values, personality and actions. The second reading from Saint Paul to the Ephesians is very special. It really encourages us to become a people who've been transformed as disciples of Christ, in our actions, attitudes, as well as in name.
The quality of our discipleship will show itself in the way we act, Saint Paul encourages his community. Never have grudges against each other. Don't lose your temper or raise your voice to anybody.
Don't call other people names or allow any sort of spitefulness. Be friends with one another and kind, forgiving each other as readily as God forgives us in Christ. Try then to imitate God as children of his that he loves and follow Christ by loving as he loved you, by giving himself up in our place.
That's that beautiful passage from Ephesians 4, 30 to chapter 5, verse 2. What a wonderful life-giving community we are called into. And it is attained not by sheer willpower and determination, but rather regular nourishment and refreshment from God's grace. We drink from God's fountain.
That's found and given to us in the sacraments and in God's word. This allows God's grace to grow deep within our hearts and also has the wonderful added and important effect of crowding out anything that is not consistent with his gospel.
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References:
Fr Paul W. Kelly
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Nineteenth Sunday of the Year B
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (or/ The Lord be with You)
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Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins,
and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.
Lord Jesus, you have revealed yourself as the way to the Father: Lord, have mercy//You have poured out on your people the Spirit of truth: Christ, have mercy//You are the Good Shepherd, leading us to eternal life: Lord, have mercy.//
May almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.
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Memorial Acclamation
Save us, Saviour of the world, for by your Cross and Resurrection you have set us free.
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Sundays Ordinary II
Various Needs and Occasions I
Communion side. pwk: LH
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Go forth, the Mass is ended.
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