Rest and Good Food

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Doing the will of God can sometimes be tiring.  Elijah, in our first reading, feels fatigued, even enough to die.  Why he feels this way comes from the chapter before the one we heard today.  Elijah had just challenged the prophets of the false god, Baal, to a test on Mount Carmel, and they lost, and he slew the prophets of Baal.  King Ahab and his wife, Queen Jezebel, were none too thrilled, since they worshipped Baal, so Elijah had to run away.  In fact, Queen Jezebel had said, “‘May the gods do thus to me and more, if by this time tomorrow I have not done with your life what was done to each of [the prophets of Baal].’”  So Elijah is tired from running, and from running for his life while the king and queen of Israel try to capture him to kill him.  

    And it is here, underneath the broom tree, that an angel instructs Elijah to eat from a hearth cake.  Elijah eats, regains his strength, and then walks for 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, which was another name for Mount Sinai.  This food must have been pretty good stuff to have him go from wanting to die and napping to walking for over a month.
    God knows we need rest.  He knows that we go through some awful things sometimes.  Even when we’re doing His will, we can get tired, especially when not everyone wants us to follow God’s will.  So what does God do?  He gives us the Mass as our time of rest.
    Now, I’m not advocating that you all fall asleep right now, and for those of you who already fell asleep because of the dullness of this homily, wake up!  But God gives us a day of rest, which for the Jews was Saturday, but which Christians almost immediately transferred to Sunday, so that we can regain our strength.  He Himself teaches us, as Jesus quotes in the Gospel today.  And He gives us the Body of Christ, under the appearance of bread, to satisfy us to go as long as we need to throughout the following six days, until we reach our next day of rest on the following Sunday.
    I think most people know they need rest, at least deep down in their heart, but how often people find excuses not to rest.  They will fill their Sundays with all sorts of other things, things which wear them out and make them more tired, but they won’t spend around one hour at Mass and they won’t take the rest of the day to just take it easy with family or friends.
    Mass is supposed to be restful.  It’s not meant to be frenetic and boisterous.  This doesn’t mean that Mass should put us to sleep.  But it is meant to be restful.  We rest intellectually when a church looks like a church.  We may not think about it much, but our minds constantly seek to understand the world around us.  They are constantly taking in pieces of information to help us interact with reality.  When everything makes sense, our minds are at ease; when something is off or not the way it’s supposed to be, our minds tend to focus on that.  So with this beautiful church, part of the draw is not just that there are expensive things, but that our minds understand that this place leads us to the worship of God and draws us out of the fallen world towards the heavenly Jerusalem by the precious materials and its orientation towards where God rests, in the tabernacle.  When a church looks like a church, no matter how ornate or simple it might be, it helps our minds to rest.
    God also teaches us in the Mass as we hear His word proclaimed to us and hear it explained in the homily.  Sometimes the Bible does not come so easily to us, because it is complex and God has inspired it to sustain us until Christ returns.  So it applies to AD 400, and AD 2024.  Sometimes it gives us historical facts, sometimes it gives us poetry, sometimes it gives us analogy, sometimes it gives us apocalyptic literature.  Some we can easily understand passages, sometimes we need help understanding what God is saying.  But there is a rest that comes from listening to good stories.  I remember in third grade that, right after recess, my teacher would read to our class a chapter of a small book, and that helped quiet our bodies and our minds down after the frenzied pace of recess.  Or think of a parent reading a bedtime story to kids as they try to get them to fall asleep.  Hearing helps us rest, and hearing the inspired Word of God gives rest to our souls.

    Lastly, God gives us Himself as food, which strengthens us.  The Eucharist is the source of our strength to live as Catholics in a world that increasingly opposes Catholicism and the teachings of Jesus.  The Eucharist is to Catholics what spinach is to Popeye.  Without it, we cannot be the people God wants us to be.  But how often do people skip Mass because there’s a sports tournament, or because they’re up north, or simply because they were out too late on Saturday night?  People bemoan that there are youth sports played on Sundays, but then they take their kids to the games and tournaments anyway.  If you want Sunday sports for young people to stop, stop taking your kids.  Let your coach know that you don’t participate in games on Sundays.  If enough people do it, they will stop having games.  Sandy Koufax, a Jewish pitcher who played for the Brooklyn, and then Los Angeles Dodgers, refused to pitch even in game one of the World Series because it was Yom Kippur.  
    We need rest, and God has given us a day of rest, where we can rest with Him in a place that helps our mind to rest and worship, while hearing the truth given to us through the Scriptures, and being sustained by the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  Don’t skip your rest.  You will need it for the road that God will lay out for you over the next six days!