Tuesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time
This is the week following the great feast of Corpus Christi, and so it is appropriate that our first reading today, from the First Book of Kings, foreshadows the Eucharist Christ will institute. In today’s reading, we encounter the Prophet Elijah miraculously multiplying food for a widow and her son. He is in need of sustenance, but so are the woman and her son. Elijah asks her to bake a cake of bread and God will provide for her and her son. She does this, and the flour and oil remain for an entire year, so they have enough to eat while there is a drought in the land.
This should call to mind for us when Jesus multiplies bread in the Gospel accounts. Both episodes, with Elijah and with Jesus, relate to the earlier accounts of God providing food for the Israelites in the desert, the manna (made into cakes), bread from heaven. Jesus is the true bread from heaven, and He provides His very life for us through the Eucharist.
When we turn to today’s Gospel reading, we encounter Jesus telling us that we are the salt of the earth, we are the light of the world. Thus He instructs us to let our light shine before others. This is one of the reasons we receive the Eucharist, so that we can be nourished to bring Jesus to others in words and in deeds. That’s what Jesus means when He tells us to be salt and light; our love must be manifest to all. He’s not saying that we should make great shows of piety in public so that people can see how pious and holy we are. Rather, He’s telling us to be in the world, loving it, transforming it, all by loving others, bringing the Love that is Jesus, Who we receive in the Eucharist, and sharing Him. In that way, those who are moved by our witness will “glorify [our] heavenly Father” (Matthew 5:16).
Let us therefore live Eucharistic lives of loving witness and service to those we encounter, and thus give glory to God.
- Jeff Morrow