Seeds:

First Reading: 1 Kings 19:4-8

• Elijah’s experience here is so raw. We’re told that after fleeing to the desert, he wished and prayed for his life to end. So many people in our world today struggle with feelings of abandonment, or extreme poverty, or circumstances that lead them to despair. This passage shows that God understands and encourages us to be open enough to share that with him.
• Notice how easily the angel of the Lord slips into the narrative; the unseen aspect of creation is just as real and tangible in the biblical worldview as the seen. How does that challenge us?
• God’s compassionate care for his people reaches into the darkest of circumstances, there is always hope.

Psalm: Psalm 33(34):2-9

• The first reading has focused our attention on Elijah’s lips in terms of his hunger and thirst, satisfied by the provision made by the angel. In light of that provision, the psalm then turns to the lips’ response: blessing and praise.
• The reading from Kings also gave us a scene of intense solitude, interrupted only by the presence of the angel. In the psalm, though, we move into a communal space: “glorify the Lord with me!”
• Finally, the angel of the Lord appears in the psalm as well as encamped around those who revere the Lord. Encampment implies reliable provision always close at hand. Are we aware of that?

Second Reading: Ephesians 4:30-5:2

• Paul is focused on the unity of the Church expressed at a grassroots level. He is deeply concerned that people try to live in a Spirit led and filled fellowship. In our day, do we take the community of our parish as seriously as Paul would imply here?
• The Imitation of Christ is one of the most influential and powerful devotional books ever written, and it takes its inspiration in part from this passage as Paul calls us to be imitators of God.
• The passage calls on us never to have grudges, but to be lavish in forgiveness; do we find this difficult? What difficulties might we encounter?

Gospel: John 6:41-51

• John chapter 6, as we look at below, is a complicated and rich chapter. It can be useful to write out each individual thought on a line and see the flow of John’s thought and argument. You might find emphases that you’ve never seen before.
• Notice how John has Jesus turn abruptly from discussing being taught by the Father to seeing the Father; what is the connection there? Why the shift?
• One of the central themes of this passage is the gift of eternal life, how can we connect that to the Eucharist?

Sapling:

This chapter of John’s gospel which we’re reading over these summer weeks is so richly textured that it’s worth spending a few moments to break it down and follow the flow of what John wanted to present.

The springboard for what Jesus says here is the grumbling complaints of his listeners. John is kind enough to tell us straight away exactly what agitated them: that Jesus claimed to be the bread of life come down from heaven.

Their next words show them to be no different from us, in the modern 21st century: they were thinking practically, and literally. How can this man be bread from heaven, he’s a carpenter! We know his parents!

That’s the context for Jesus’ lengthy and quite complicated reply, so let’s take it bit by bit:

Jesus’ first line seems to come out of the blue: “no one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father”. I say it comes out of the blue, because I don’t think people were asking how to come to the Father, they were asking about Jesus as the bread of life!

There’s a hidden clue right there, then: to come to Jesus as the bread that comes down from heaven is to be drawn by the Father. It’s not something that happens by purely human means. On purely human terms we look and see a wafer of wheat and water baked in an oven. When drawn by the Father, we recognise Jesus.

Jumping down a few lines, Jesus expands on what he means by being drawn by the Father to come to him: it’s to hear the teaching of the Father and learn from it.

Jesus quotes in this context Isaiah 54:13, where the prophet declares “all your children shall be taught by the LORD”. The context here isn’t so much about learning from the Father’s revelation in scripture or in the creeds and traditions of the Church, but on a direct, personal, perhaps prayerful speaking into a person’s heart.

This reading systematically destroys our default materialistic view of the world. Do we really expect that the Father will directly, personally speak into our lives? That means moving far beyond a view of God as quietly governing creation but letting us get on with the nitty gritty of life; the kind of God that, if believed in at all, a lot of people in the western world today would be comfortable with.

But the Bible here presents a God on the move, actively trying to introduce us to his Son.

Why? So he can give us the supreme gift of eternal life. That promise punctuates each section of this passage.

What do we do, then? Are we just passive? Waiting for the Father to go ahead and draw us to Jesus? Or is it a one-time deal: I’m already baptised, he’s done that, so I’m on my own now?

We read of Elijah today as well, who received visits from angels and didn’t question them. The same Elijah who went to Mount Horeb and encountered God in the stillness.

We can learn from him, and from the Carmelites who have followed in the footsteps of Elijah, how to position ourselves to more easily hear the voice of God, through prayer and attentiveness to the present moment. If we’ve never been drawn to Jesus, we can do that for the first time; if we’ve been drawn before but now find ourselves cold and distant from him, we can renew that openness. It can start with something as simple as closing your eyes and asking God to speak, then giving him space and quiet to do just that. And if he doesn’t in that moment, go from that prayer into daily life with your spiritual antennae ready to see which people or situations pop up. It could be exactly those people or situations, speaking from God, that you were asking for. It’s an amazing journey, good luck.

Fruit:

• The focus of the readings of the next few weeks is the Eucharist, although there are many other themes which we’ll try to bring out in these reflections as well. Nevertheless, you might like to accompany these weeks with a reading of the passages of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that concentrate on the Eucharist, especially paragraphs 1322 to 1419.
  
  
• Writings of the Carmelite saints such as:
  • The Story of a Soul, St. Therese of Lisieux
  • The Way of Perfection, St. Teresa of Avila
  • Spiritual Canticle, St. John of the Cross

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