Commentaries for 19th Sunday Year B

First Reading: 1 Kings 19:4–8

⁴ But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” ⁵ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” ⁶ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. ⁷ The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” ⁸ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

After defeating the prophets of Baal, Elijah flees from the wicked Queen Jezebel, who had slaughtered all the prophets of the Lord except Elijah and is now sending the police force to capture him.

God reacts in a touching way to Elijah’s request for death – an excellect breakfast and a substantial lunch to fortify Elijah for a 40-day trek through the Sinai desert. –> God sends help to us – angels – at our darkest times.

“How is your spiritual diet? What is your diet spiritually? How are you eating? Spiritual food – How fragile and dependent we are for normal food provides a great analogy for spiritual health and spiritual eating… The soul is the dimension that links the whole of us into the eternal. And the soul needs to be fed or else it shrinks down and becomes weak, atrophying from lack of nutrition and proper exercise spiritually. If we don’t feed the soul, it will hit the wall under distress and become flabby, lethargic and die. So how can you feed your soul? 1. Prayer – raise your heart and mind to God, a conversation with Him who loves us. 2. Spiritual reading. 3. Works of mercy. 4. Eucharist. Necessary for divine life – taking eternal life into you.” – Bishop Barron

We are called to be honest and frank with the Lord, voicing complaints in an atmosphere of trust and love with our Father.

Response: Psalm 34:9a

Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.

Second Reading: Ephesians 4:30–5:2

³⁰ And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. ³¹ Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³² and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. 5 ¹ Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, ² and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Gospel: John 6:41–51

⁴¹ Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” ⁴² They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” ⁴³ Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. ⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. ⁴⁶ Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷ Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰ This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”