Life-Affirming God!

Sunday, August 11, 2024

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

1 Kgs 19:4-8; Eph 4:30-5:2; Jn 6:41-51

The nineteenth Sunday invites us to reflect on the life-affirming grace of God. 

Out of love, God creates life and wants us to be the living testaments of God’s love. 

The readings of today draw our attention to the life-affirming role of God in our lives. 

The first reading shows prophet Elijah running for his life from the evil queen Jezebel. It is very unfortunate to see that the man who runs for his life wants God to take away his life. Though the desperate and confused prophet seeks the end of his life, God’s response is very different. God feeds Elijah. The miraculous feeding of Elijah has already happened twice: 1) by ravens (1 Kgs 17:6); and 2) by a widow (1 Kgs 17:9). God now feeds Elijah by sending an angel. God not only nourishes the one who wants to die but also denies death to his beloved prophet altogether. (Elijah did not die; he was taken to heaven in a whirlwind as he rode in a chariot of fire – 2 Kgs 2:11). In Elijah’s instance and God’s response, we find the stark contrast between Divine Vision and human short-sightedness. The life-affirming response of God so strengthens the prophet that he walks forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. God is not a life-denier. Rather, God is a life-affirmer. God wishes that we carry forward His holy will for humanity.

The second reading puts forward a different vision of Christian life, which can only be experienced through love. Paul wants our lives to be a testament to love. Paul emphasizes the connection between claiming to love God, claiming to have experienced His love, and demonstrating that we love our neighbor. In Paul’s view, the reciprocity of receiving God’s love and extending it to others is what symbolizes true Christian identity. We are called to measure our lives, not by the number of days but by the number of lives we have touched through love. Therefore, Christians should be able to say, ‘I love, therefore I am.’ The instruction of Paul reminds me of the words of Wandell Berry, who holds that we only live to the extent we love: ‘I know that I have life/ only insofar as I have love.’ When love defines Christian lives, we are transformed into life-affirming disciples.  

The Gospel underlines the life-affirming nature of Jesus. But Jesus’ claim that ‘I am the bread from heaven’ only meets with murmuring and resentment from the Jews around him. The same crowd that praised Jesus and tried to make him king when he fed the crowd of five thousand (Jn 6:15) is unwilling to understand the truth of Jesus’ statement. Jesus wants the crowd to perceive the inward meaning of the outward sign of multiplication. But they seem so satisfied with the material sign that they are not receptive to the spiritual value it carries. This is the problem with the attitude of Jews. By sending His only Son into the world as the ‘Bread of Life,’ the life-affirming God wants to take them beyond the evil of impermanence to immortality and eternal life. They hardly see the truth that when Jesus says, ‘I am the Bread of Life,’ it is not about bread but about life. The Bread of Life does not just fill the stomachs, as it happens in Elijah’s example in the first reading, but it also satisfies the profound hunger of human life. Hence, Jesus, as the Bread of Life, is the giver of eternal life. Its effect is not about immediate satisfaction but about eternal gratification. In this sense, Jesus wants them to distinguish between the bread from God (which their ancestors ate in the desert) and the Bread of Life. The former is about food coming from God. The latter is God taking the form of nourishing food. Thus, by obstructing Jesus’ move to take them beyond food to the fact, they also fail to understand that Jesus came to give life in abundance (Jn 10:10). It takes spiritual maturity to discover the life-affirming interventions of God. 

Against the backdrop they provide, the readings raise some important questions. 

Material and Eternal: The readings prompt us to distinguish between the material and the eternal. How often do we realize that the material is a sign of the eternal? If we are stuck in materiality, how can we understand the implications it carries for the spiritual and eternal? 

Christ and the Affirmation of Life: Christ affirms life. This is why, even though we are sinners, we can still hope for forgiveness and reconciliation. How can we replicate the life-affirming Christ in our lives? The abundant life we receive from Christ is meant to be shared with others. 

Love and Christian Life: If there is a word that can summarize Christian life, it is love. How does love define our lives? Are we imitators of Christ, who was love personified? What prevents us from sharing Christ’s love with our neighbors? 

Indeed, life is hard. But God is good all the time!

Let us pray that we may spread the love of the life-affirming God through exemplary lives.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar