19th Sunday Ordinary Time - August 13th, 2023 (Click Here for Readings)

In this Sunday’s readings, the virtues of faith and recognition of God’s voice were paramount in the lives of Elijah, Saints Paul and Peter.

Elijah, with his life threatened by Jezabel for striving to persuade the Jews away from the false god Baal, felt useless and went into hiding in a cave. But God was insistent in telling Elijah to go back and revive his ministry through Elisha. He also knew that Elijah’s compassionate and sensitive soul would be more affected by the tender mercies of his whispers rather than the terror of strong winds and earthquakes.
 
So let us ask ourselves, how many of God’s whispers to us do we miss due to our lack of compassion and recognition? Do we need earthquakes or strong winds to hear him? If we’ve ever felt as useless as Elijah in what God was calling us to do, did we feel like going off somewhere in solitude on a hilltop or a lakeside?

If we feel we’ve missed God’s whispers at our times of need for guidance or encouragement, perhaps we should have been still more often to hear him better. God tells us as he told Elijah, “The Lord will be passing by," and we must learn to recognize him in his most quiet of signs.

How often have we been discouraged in our attempts to encourage people to accept Jesus as St. Paul was with his own people whom he loved in today’s reading to the Romans? We are under siege today as Elijah and St. Paul both were from godless and Christless forces, and we must continually pray for the alertness and sensitivity to recognize God’s whispers of guidance and encouragement to press on and be victorious. It’s exhausting but exhilarating work.

Today’s Gospel points out that when Jesus was finished feeding the crowd of people, he was definitely exhausted and needed prayer time alone to bear himself back up. Are we any different? Can we expect to continue Jesus’ work without the need for ongoing prayer to fuel our feeding of his precious word to others?
 
Without a deep prayer life, our faith can sink as quickly as St. Peter’s when he tried to walk on the water toward Jesus. And if these waters were able to sink him, they would be nothing in comparison to the waters he would soon embark on as the rock upon the church that Jesus would build.

So what about us? Do we start to sink at the lightest of burdens and challenges to our faith? We may not be able to quickly regain our faith by seeing Jesus’ divinity eye to eye as Peter did, but we can regain it regularly by consuming the body and blood of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist at Mass. We can gain the dominance and victory we need over the secular forces of our world that are always passing by in attempt to ward off God’s whispers to us.

Elijah became victorious by transferring his ministry to Elisha. St. Paul by refocusing his ministry to the Gentiles, and St. Peter by his eye witness, faith and recognition of Jesus’ divinity on the boat.

So let us no longer “miss the boat” when our Lord is passing by with his whispers.

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