Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist October 5, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert Cajundome Convention Center
“Enough, Lord!” Who among us has not made this exasperated prayer of Elijah our own? There’s usually joy and all kinds of good fortune that comes along with the first serious turn towards the Lord, but it seems only a matter of time before any committed believer reaches the point where they feel as he did – alone, burdened, and just plain weary of feeling like the harder they try to do the right thing, the more everything goes wrong. As if the world says “oh, you want to pray every day? How about your job, neighbors, and even your pets pester you at every waking moment?” Or “you want to give up that bad habit? Here’s some depression, boredom, and loneliness because all your friends still want to do it.” Perhaps most like Elijah, there’s that moment when you try, in all sincerity, to invite a loved one to turn away from this or that sin only to find yourself suddenly named their worst enemy.
Then our prayer might begin to sound like Elijah’s. Why, God? Why does it seem that the closer we draw to the light of your loving truth, the more we find our lives full of darkness? You promised, Lord, you promised to reward those who serve you! Where is it? Was I happier before I cared, before I tried to do what you asked? To paraphrase St. Theresa of Avila, if this is how you treat your friends, is it any wonder you have so few of them?
If you’ve not prayed in such a way, I hope there comes a day that you do. Not that I wish suffering on anyone for its own sake, just that, as Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos put it, “It is only through suffering that we become holy. And to become holy is our only purpose in life, our only preparation for heaven.” What I desire for you is what was given to Elijah and more. Only after trials like his and prayer like his can we then receive gifts like his with a truly open heart. For us as for Elijah, the Lord sends us something, someone to strengthen us. Elijah eats, drinks, and rests in this gift, finding the strength to reach the mountain of God.
It’s a favorite theme of God’s: we become weary, are given some bread, and then told to keep going. Jesus reminds us of the Israelites in the desert who, just freed from literal slavery, actually suggest that dying with a full belly as a slave would be better… kinda how we might think we were happier before our conversion. So God feeds them bread from heaven and tells them to keep moving. And they do. Reluctantly, inconsistently, full of complaints, yet they do eventually arrive. They also still die. Elijah fares a bit better – taken up in a fiery chariot – but what is that compared to what’s on offer right here, right now?
The very body and blood of Christ, as St. Paul reminds us. Whoever eats of it will live forever. More than the energy to keep walking, this bread – the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ – overcomes death itself. We are not only allowed to eat of it, but commanded to do so, given an entire order of men who’s responsibility it is to “do this in memory” of Jesus so that we can continue to eat of it, and strengthened by it, come to eternal life.
This is no mere doctrinal recitation for me. While still in college at UL, I attended a silent retreat. My conversion had already happened and I was mostly convinced that life was better for it. Yet the silence – that spiritual surgery – posed some difficult questions: the kind of existential worries that I used to distract myself from with sin. Anxious, bored, and unsure of what to do with days more of silence to come, I finally wandered into the choir loft at the back of the chapel. “Enough, Lord!”
How can I describe it? A near tangible pressure, like being suddenly immersed in water. I could hear nothing. I could see nothing but the tiniest candle in the distance, quietly flickering, bearing witness to something. To someone. I’d been to adoration before. Many, many times in fact. But it became more real to me: someone was there and that someone brought strength, fed me himself so that I could keep walking.
A few years later, another silent retreat, this time as a confident young seminarian ready to criticize the theological errors I happened across. Even when I was right, those answers could not resolve the questions lurking in my heart. Even the retreat’s multiple holy hours each day did not solve everything. There were insights, consolations, and convictions through those times of prayer. Yet, much like Elijah’s victories did not erase his trials, so these did not erase mine. Intense darkness, anxiety about who and what I am, worry over the future of the Church and my place in it coalesced to turn me into a weeping mess, curled up in the corner of the room. Enough Lord!
Then came the Eucharistic procession at the end of the retreat. Hundreds of seminarians, thousands of people came to Mass and walked miles through whole neighborhoods, stopping several times to pray and be blessed. Fireworks greeted our Eucharistic Lord as the monstrance entered the final Church and new joy and perseverance greeted my Lord as he entered into the darkness of my heart so recently uncovered.
A few years more gave me a story of a witness much greater than myself. Serving an assignment as a seminarian, I was tasked with helping at a Mass in a nearby nursing home. What a beautiful mess such occasions are with the smells, sights, and sounds not normally conducive to prayer, yet nonetheless serving as a witness to the breadth of human trials and experiences in need of Eucharistic strength. Handed a ciboria and led by a volunteer, I came to a room in the very back corner of the building. Laying there was a man who could see nothing and hear nothing, left only with the very first senses we develop: touch and smell. He’d done nothing to deserve such a fate besides live a long time. I wonder how many times he too cried out, “enough, Lord!”
This man’s caretakers could communicate with him through hand to hand contact. So it was that, in a dark isolation most of us will never face and could scarcely imagine, someone signed into his palm a very simple message: it’s time for communion. How much greater a contrast it must have been for him than my experience of that candle flame in a dark church. A light in the darkness, someone present where before he was alone, bread from heaven given to one who surely wondered how much father he could go. The man sat bolt upright with surprising speed for his age. I was privileged to do as the angel had done for Elijah and give this man the only bread capable of producing such strength and joy in someone with so many reasons to know only weary loneliness. I pray that I may one day receive the Eucharist with such devotion.
“Enough, Lord!” This is the prayer of the Eucharistic Revival. Only, it is also the answer. I cannot promise things will get better in this life for the Lord does not promise that either. Elijah’s enemies did not disappear, but at the mountain he heard God in the small, still voice, finding new peace and joy. He was shown that he was not alone, that there would be another to carry on his work. By our bread from heaven, we too are granted peace and joy in the midst of suffering, we too are made one body, united to faithful of every time and place. In this gift our seemingly insignificant efforts are made part of that perfect work of Jesus Christ by being brought to the altar at each Mass.
Enough, Lord. You are enough for us. You give us bread to eat, your flesh for the life of the world. When we eat this bread with contrite and open hearts, when we receive this light in the darkness, we will not only find strength to carry on, but to live forever. And therein lies our hope, that accompanied by his presence, fed by this bread from heaven, we shall outlive all that ails us: loneliness and pain, sorrow and weakness, temptation and rejection – however long they shall last in this life, none of them can last forever. They will fade, but we will remain with the God who remains with us now, giving us his flesh to eat. And that is enough, Lord, and more than enough, for you are all in all.