Readings (Year B):
1 Kgs 19:4-8
Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9
Eph 4:30—5:2
Jn 6:41-51
Reflection: The meal that unites us
Elijah the prophet is running for his life. We don’t hear about it in today’s first reading, but earlier chapters of 1 Kings describe his conflict with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. These powerful, corrupt political leaders threaten Elijah with violence, so he runs into the desert. The journey from Jezreel to Beersheba was about one hundred miles—a long journey to make on foot! We hear Elijah’s exhaustion and despair when he prays for God to take his life. But God responds with care and tenderness, sending an angel with food and drink. In placing this reading with the section from the bread of life discourse, the church invites us to reflect on how the food given to Elijah prefigures the bread of life, the bread come down from heaven, Christ’s own self in the Eucharist.
Last year, I shared a Eucharistic meal with people in circumstances a lot like Elijah’s. Along with others from the parish where I serve, I spent a week volunteering at Catholic Charities’ Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border. Hundreds of migrant men, women, and children stay at the Center for a few days after they are admitted into the United States. It’s a safe place to rest, eat, and access needed toiletries or clothes. Here asylum seekers make plans to continue their travel to be reunited with family members waiting to receive them.
And the Center is also a place where migrants are offered spiritual food for the journey in the Eucharist. One afternoon, two Jesuit priests came and celebrated a simple Mass in one corner of the large room where migrants rested on mats on the floor. No incense, no trained musicians, no stained-glass windows, no fresh flowers surrounding the altar. No pomp and circumstance at all. We sat on simple plastic chairs, and the altar was a basic, well-worn folding table. And yet I remember it as one of my most graced experiences of Eucharist.
Like Elijah, the migrants are fleeing violence and persecution. Many are running for their lives. And the journeys from Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, and other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean are far longer than Elijah’s journey to Beersheba. For me, a white, English-speaking, middle class American citizen with a pretty comfortable life, sharing in the Eucharistic celebration with them was a powerful reminder of Eucharist as a sacrament of unity.
Those of us gathered spoke different languages, had different ethnic identities, came from different countries, and were heading to different destinations. We ranged from babies held in arms to elders in their 80s. And we were equals in the communion procession. We all showed up hungry, needing living bread, needing hope, needing strength, needing the nourishment only God can give.
When you next receive Jesus in the sacrament, join me in giving thanks for the unity we share with people around the world. And join me in praying that our meal at the Lord’s table may bridge all that divides us and bring us into greater unity.
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