Christ becomes our spiritual food.
The Old Testament tells us of Elijah the prophet. As such, he was a source of discomfort for those who would not do God’s will. The Queen of Israel, Jezebel, did not recognize the true God. She followed Baal, a false and nonexistent god, and his crowd of pseudo‑prophets. The Israelites soon became unfaithful to the Covenant, turning away from God’s friendship, demolishing his altars, and putting his prophets to the sword. Jezebel then threatened Elijah, who alone remained faithful to God and who denounced the sinful worshipping of Baal.
Frightened, Elijah fled to save his life. He ran into the wilderness toward Mount Horeb. After a day’s journey, he sat under a furze bush. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said, “take my life; I am no better than my ancestors”. Then he fell exhausted and went to sleep.
In the same way that God did not abandon his people while they crossed the Sinai desert, neither did God forsake his prophet Elijah. An angel touched Elijah in his sleep and said, “Get up and eat.” Elijah looked round, and there at his head was a bread baked in hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank. His exhaustion was such that he lay down again.
But the angel of the Lord came back a second time and invited him to eat again for “the journey will be too long for you.” Strengthened by the food he walked for forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There, at the entrance of a cave, Elijah heard the voice of God as the sound of a gentle breeze. The prophet covered his face with his cloak, out of reverence.
God spoke to Elijah, comforted him, and sent him back on his mission. The whisper of a light breeze signifies that God is a spirit, who brings us peace and whose attributes are wise counsel and calm constancy. God converses intimately with us.
The food that sustained Elijah is a figure of the Eucharist, “strengthened by whose vigor,” says the Council of Trent, “Christians are enabled to travel this pilgrimage of misery, and come at last to their heavenly fatherland.” God gives us food and drink more precious than bread and a jar of water: his body and blood. As in the Last Supper and on Calvary, these are prepared in the sacrifice of the altar, and given to us.
The Eucharist directs also our eyes toward our last destination. The fullness of the New Covenant will reach its culmination in the new and everlasting Jerusalem, in the heavens, where all the chosen ones shall be gathered in the eternal banquet.
To communicate with the body and blood of our Lord is, in a certain sense, like loosening the bonds of earth and time, to be already with God in heaven, where Christ himself will wipe the tears from our eyes and where there will be no more death, nor mourning, nor cries of distress because the old world will have passed away.”
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