We continue this weekend with our homily series on the Bread of Life discourse called “More than enough” — so let’s begin with a quick recap of where we’ve been: 

We first meditated on the truth that our God is a God of more than enough — He provides for everything we actually need. Next, we asked the question: What if what God gives us still doesn’t seem like it’s enough? What if we just want to go back to Egypt… where at least it seemed like we had ‘more than enough?’ We came to the conclusion that… No, we don’t actually want to settle for Egypt. We don’t ever want to go back to slavery… Anything less than EVERYTHING is not enough for us. We saw how Jesus — in giving us Himself in the Holy Eucharist — in giving us the Bread of Life — gives us precisely what we all want deep down: 

He gives us the EVERYTHING that we hunger for… 

The Eucharist… is everything.

This week, we continue our reflection.

And I want to face this reality: That even after God provides for us in superabundance, and even after we resist that terrible temptation to go back to our old life in Egypt — the fact of the matter remains: 

Life is still hard.

I’m talking about the daily grind. Our personal prayer life, paying the bills, taking care of the kids, maintaining a household… That continuous, ongoing journey of simply following the Lord, of just living life as a Christian… that takes its toll, doesn’t it? It’s not easy…

After a while, our everyday duties, our responsibilities, and our difficulties can start to wear us down. They can start to pile up, right? Until at times, it can get to the point where we are tempted… not to go back to Egypt, but just to sort of… give up. To throw up our hands and say: “I’VE HAD IT… I’M TIRED OF ALL THIS… THIS…This is impossible, Lord!”

Today in our first reading from the First Book of Kings we meet a Bible character who knows exactly what that feels like… the prophet Elijah.

Elijah understands what it means to get to the breaking point in his walk with the Lord.

We pick up Elijah’s story at a really low point in his life. He’s on the run, being chased down by the evil King Ahab and his wacko wife Jezebel.

We heard in our first reading that Elijah went about a day’s journey into the desert, until he came to a broom tree and sat beneath it. He then prayed for death saying: “This is enough, O LORD!” — as if to say: “You know what God….I’m done. This is just TOO HARD following You. I can’t go any farther.”

But God essentially responds like this: “Yes you can, Elijah. You can do this. You can persevere. But only with my help. Only with what I provide for you. With me, and with My Love… you have MORE THAN ENOUGH to keep going.” 

…And then — miraculous cakes and water are provided for him! And a messenger tells him:

“Get up and eat, or else the journey will be too long for you!”

I love this so much: Elijah is getting to the point where he doesn’t think he can go on. He’s running out of gas and he’s getting restless. He’s beginning to complain. But then God shoves food in Elijah’s mouth to shut him up.

Isn’t this what parents do with their kids? You bring cheerios to church for a reason… I find them in church pews all the time! Kids have a hard time making it all the way through mass. Heck… some adults have a hard time making it all the way through mass… Sometimes the homily… I MEAN… the journey just seems too long.

But here we see the kindness and patience of God. It’s like the Lord is saying to Elijah: “Shut up and just eat something. It’ll make you feel better. It’ll be more than enough to keep you going. It’ll tide you over.”

God does the same for us.

When life seems too long… Too dark. Too painful. Too confusing… The Lord feeds us, saying:

“Get up and eat, or else the journey will be too long for you!”

“Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died,” Jesus says in our gospel today —  your ancestors had food for their journey… but they all died. They didn’t last! They didn’t persevere! The journey was too long for them… But I have something better for you, Jesus says: The Bread of Life. 

“This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.”

THIS is the Bread that is actually more than enough to keep you going on this journey of life!

The Most Holy Eucharist has often been referred to as “bread for the journey.” It’s the food that we each need to KEEP GOING… to KEEP FOLLOWING Jesus ever single day.

Because following Jesus is hard. 

Remaining open to life in marriage is HARD. 

Handing on the faith to our children in today’s culture is HARD. 

Going off to seminary… Entering the convent… is HARD.

Carrying the Cross and dying to self is HARD.

We need ongoing nourishment if we’re gonna make it to the end of this journey. We need a spiritual powerbar… packed, not with protein, but with DIVINE GRACE that can fortify our spiritual muscles to keep climbing the heights of holiness! 

That’s the Holy Eucharist. And we can’t live without it.

St. Cyril of Alexandria once said that “The body of Christ gives life to those who receive it.” Msgr. Ronald Knox referred to the Eucharist as, “the day’s food for the day’s march.” We pray everyday in the Our Father: 

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

What are we asking for, but this supernatural food for the journey of life…? This divine food that strengthens us when things seem just too difficult to go on…?

All of this reminds me of my absolute favorite book — the Lord of the Rings — where the main characters, Frodo and Sam, find themselves on an epic journey to travel all the way into the evil land of Mordor in order to destroy the Ring.

Along the way, the Elves provide them with food — a sort of bread — which they call “lembas bread.” 

Listen to the way Tolkien — who was himself a devout Catholic — describes this Elvish lembas bread: 

“It had a virtue without which Frodo and Sam would long ago had lain down to die…” [just like Elijah, who sat under the broom tree and prayed for death!] “It did not satisfy desire, and at times Sam’s mind was filled with memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats.” […Memories of Egypt? Memories of all those delicious onions…?] “And yet, this waybread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travelers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure.”

I love that line: The bread “had a potency that INCREASED as travelers RELIED ON IT ALONE.”

Fellow travelers — This is EXACTLY what we believe about the Eucharist! 

…As we come to rely on our Lord, hidden in the Eucharistic Bread more and more exclusively — as we entrust ourselves to Him, the Bread of Life, and recognize our total dependence on Him… we are given strength to endure anything and everything. We find the will power, the endurance…to KEEP GOING.

“Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst,” Jesus says. “This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die.”

We must ask ourselves this: Are we really leaning on the Eucharist yet? Are we TOTALLY depending on the Most Blessed Sacrament?

You know, at various times in Church history, we’ve seen saints who literally depended ONLY the Holy Eucharist… not only for their spiritual well-being… but even their physical sustenance!

Saint Catherine of Siena lived solely on the Eucharist for 25 years until her death. 

St. Joseph of Cupertino spent 5 years eating and drinking nothing but Holy Communion. 

Beginning on Good Friday, March 7, 1942 until her death 13 years and 7 months later, Blessed Alexandrina Da Costa was nourished by nothing but the Holy Eucharist. Her medical doctors became somewhat hostile and suspicious about this supposed miracle, running several tests on her, but ultimately they declared that the phenomenon was “scientifically inexplicable.” Later, Blessed Alexandrina reported that Jesus himself told her in prayer: “You are living by the Eucharist alone because I want to prove to the world the power of the Eucharist and the power of my life in souls.”

Now perhaps nobody here is being called to eat ONLY the Holy Eucharist for the rest of their earthly life. But the point still stands: If only we knew, if only we APPRECIATED the POWER of the Eucharist and the POWER of Christ’s life in our souls!

I bet we’d never skip mass again.

Padre Pio once said that “It would be easier for the world to survive without the sun than to do without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.”

That’s insane — The WORLD depends on the celebration of the Mass! “The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

So… do you really think you can afford missing Sunday mass? Do you actually think you have enough strength to skip a Holy Day of Obligation?

Are you willing to take that risk?

The Eucharist should define our lives. 

We ought to dread missing Mass more than we would dread missing breakfast, lunch and dinner! We ought to dread missing out on the Eucharist more than we would dread missing our family reunion, a grandkid’s birthday party, a sporting event, or that Taylor Swift concert we forked over our life-savings to go to. 

This also means that whenever we are traveling, whenever we have family in town, whenever we just don’t feel like it — we need to do our absolute best to get up and go to Mass anyways. Those just aren’t good enough excuses to miss Sunday mass. We need to “get up and eat, or else the journey will be too long for us!”

You might be stumbling and tired and broken down, your life might be messy, it might not be perfect, your family might not have it all together — but always remember: God alone has the food that will keep you moving forward. 

The Eucharist is more than enough for you to keep you going.