Brief synopsis of the readings: In our first reading from 1st Kings we read about the prophet Elijah who is in the desert, in flight for his life. He then prayed to die. But he was given food and water and told to continue his journey. Once nourished he walked another 40 days to the mountain of God in Horeb. John’s Gospel continues the theme from next week. Some around Jesus grumbled about Jesus claiming to be the bread of life: “Is this not Jesus, son of Joseph?” and wondered how he could claim to have come down from heaven. Jesus then told them to stop murmuring and stated that nobody has seen the Father “except the one who is from God.” He then reinforced that he is the bread of life and whoever eats this bread will live forever. “[T]he bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

And they all lived happily ever after. You see, after last week’s reading about the transformative power of the Eucharist it would make sense. We build community, we see each other in a new light, we see what needs to be done and we do it. And we live happily ever after.

Well, it’s not that simple and not everyone looks on this the same way. It’s an unfortunate reality that not everyone who shares beliefs really wants the same thing. There were some Jews at the time who professed their desire for the coming of the Messiah but had gotten so comfortable that they denied Jesus. And alas, today we see Catholics who profess belief in the Eucharist but put up roadblocks to the community and transformations it promises.

I’ve always thought of this as partly because of priests who see Eucharist as job security. In a larger sense, though, it’s the fear that if God’s gift runs outside our authority we’re not sure of our place in the order of things. We need to keep order to ensure we’re always necessary.

They claim that feeding the hungry only promotes laziness. That visiting the prisoner only rewards bad choices. That welcoming the alien unfairly punishes those who belong. I’ve spoken about this before but it’s as if some of us try to “take control” of the sacraments. We decide which politician or public figure should be barred from receiving Communion, we tell good people that because of their “irregular marriages” (regardless of the circumstances) that they are excluded. And perhaps most heartbreaking of all, we tell Catholics who live with Celiac disease (and become violently ill from even miniscule bits of wheat) that Eucharist must be unleavened wheat. But other parts of the world use rice as their primary grain. Do we insist on wheat because that’s what God intended or because that’s what the early Jewish and Christian communities knew?

Time and again we’ve seen God choose people over things, and yet we persist. We define sacraments as “efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us.” We certainly have a role to play in all sacraments and finding the balance of what God wants and what we need should always concern us.

You may remember from your days of studying Western Civilization in school the name Charlemagne. He became the Holy Roman Emperor in the year 800. He wasn’t a member of the clergy but had a great deal of influence. In earlier days almost everyone in Europe spoke Latin but by Charlemagne’s time regional dialects began to transform into what we know as Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. But Charlemagne believed that any mispronunciation during the celebration invalidated the sacrament and insisted that all worship be in perfect Latin. As a result, generations of Catholics all over the world could not understand what the priest was saying in the same language. It also ensured that education and status would remain with the clergy, that they spoke to God in God’s own language. Priests of previous generations were often complemented on their mastery of Latin while bad preaching and harsh treatment of others was often overlooked.

But ultimately Eucharist, and all sacraments, come from God. And they come from God not to keep us in line or provide a minimum of behavioral standards. They come to us to give us what we need to have divine life dispensed to us. And lest we need another example, we can look at the prophet Elijah in our first reading. To give some context, he was in flight for his life from King Ahab. Ahab was king of the Northern Kingdom but had married a pagan worshipper (Jezebel) who influenced him to stray from God. Elijah criticized this and fled for his life. In this reading he had reached the end of his rope and wanted only death. But while Ahab was done with Elijah and Elijah was done with life, God wasn’t done with Elijah. The food and drink that were provided to Elijah certainly foretold the Eucharist but it also gave him what he needed to continue his journey. Ahab and Jezebel couldn’t have been happy with Elijah’s successful journey to Horeb.

Last week I spoke about how Eucharist should bring us together and today I wish to speak about how our role is to cooperate with God’s love in how we celebrate. Eucharist, and indeed all sacraments, form the framework of our faith and our practice. We hold them up as symbols of God’s love for us and we need to stop treating them as rare and precious resources.

If Jesus is the bread of life (and he says he is) then anyone who approaches needs to be dealt with the generosity that we take for granted. I don’t believe God will be pleased with us by bragging about how we ensure that only the “deserving” share Eucharist. Left to our own devices, none of us are deserving. But God’s love makes us deserving.