Aug. 8, 2021: 19th Sunday B

 Aug. 8, 2021: 19th Sunday B

What do you tell someone who says they stopped going to Mass because they don’t feel anything when they go to church and they feel distant from the reality of God and his love for them? Many of us have personally experienced feelings of dryness or emptiness in our spiritual life. Did you know that many canonized saints experienced prolonged periods of dryness or darkness? For example, Mother Teresa wrote in a private letter, “In my soul, I feel just the terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.” She was a saint who was an intimate, faithful disciple of Jesus who spent many hours in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. And yet at the level of her feelings, she felt as if Jesus was absent from her. 

We all have experienced weariness and emptiness of life when we felt like giving up on prayer, the Holy Mass, and service to others. At times we feel like saying with Prophet Elijah, “This is enough, O LORD!” In the First Reading, we find Prophet Elijah tired and scared, on the run from Queen Jezebel’s mercenaries for preaching against idolatry in Israel. He felt alone, for no one cared to hear his message even after the miracle God performed on Mount Carmel. He despaired to the point of asking for death. Then an angel came with bread from heaven and water reminding him to nourish himself because his mission and journey was not over. “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!” 

The kind of bread we eat will determine whether we will be nourished and strengthened or become famished and weak. Our Lord said to the disbelieving Jews, “I am the bread of life.  Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died… I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever.” They disbelieved the possibility that Jesus could be anything more than a man whose mom and dad they knew to be from a small town of Nazareth. He couldn’t be from heaven because he is from Nazareth. 

A similar familiarity hampers us as well. While intellectually we know that Jesus is from Heaven, that he is the Son of God, and that Eucharist is his true Body and Blood, in how we live our daily lives we don’t seem to distinguish between food that perishes and food that endures for eternal life. We often spend more time and energy on the perishable bread rather than on imperishable bread. Think about what perishable bread means to us; where do we spend our money, where do we spend our time, and where do we preoccupy our hearts? Is time spent on social media, money spent on trips?  Were they spent for the love of God and love of neighbor? As more of our time and energy are spent on the bread of the world, our spiritual life languishes. Gradually, God seems more distant from us and less compelling than the savory bread of the world. 

A spiritual writer wrote, “God allows moments of darkness, of agitation, and bitterness, so that we might know what we are and, conscious of our misery, and of our nothingness, we might throw ourselves back onto Him, with total trust, only in Him.” If our life has proven wearisome till now, perhaps the time has arrived for us to decide and to take a stand: with Jesus or against Jesus. 

When I’m invited to a family home for a visit, I ask where their prayer corner or prayer altar is. I ask the family if there is a spot in the house where they go to say their prayers, pray the Rosary, or read the Scriptures. More important than the size of the kitchen or the amenities in the living room is a sacred space in the house where the word of God is meditated and chewed upon or the mysteries of Jesus’ life is contemplated in the Rosary. Where in the house do you honor Jesus, the Master of your house? Or is the giant TV screen the centerpiece of your home, where you spend the most of your time? When was the last time you prayed the Rosary, visited the Confessional, prayed as a family, or attended a retreat? Our Lord said, “ Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes… But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added unto you.”  

Mother Teresa said, “We cannot separate our lives from the Eucharist; the moment we do, something breaks… Our life is linked to the Eucharist… without beginning each day with Jesus  in Communion, we could do nothing.” The Eucharist involves more than just receiving; we must also become bread for others in order to satisfy the hunger of Christ in souls.

 Jesus told Mother Teresa that just as she was fed by him, she must bring him to those who do not know or love him. Jesus told her, “Come be my light. I cannot go alone - they don’t know me, so they don’t want me. Go amongst them, carry me with you into them.” The true joy and energy comes from Jesus the Bread of Life. We must feed on him so that we can be transformed to be nourishment for others.  -Fr. Paul Yi