From today’s first reading: “Elijah went a day’s journey into the desert, until he came to a broom tree and sat beneath it. He prayed for death saying: ‘This is enough, O LORD! Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.’ He lay down and fell asleep under the broom tree, but then an angel touched him and ordered him to get up and eat. Elijah looked and there at his head was a hearth cake and a jug of water. After he ate and drank, he lay down again, but the angel of the LORD came back a second time, touched him, and ordered, ‘Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!’ He got up, ate, and drank; then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb."

From today’s gospel: “Jesus answered and said to them, . . . ‘I am the bread of life.'"

“Are you thus so closely united to Jesus Christ when you receive him that nothing is able to separate you from him?" (De La Salle, Med. 49.2)

Despite all that Elijah had done in God’s service, he was ready to give up. But the Lord did not give up on him, and provided him the sustenance needed for the journey to the mountain of God, a journey which was described by using, in the words of Old Testament scholar Bernhard Anderson, “[a]n expression meaning ‘a long time'" (Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament 4th ed., 88). Our mission is no less long, certainly far longer than forty days and nights. What sustains us during the heat of the day, the whine of those not wanting homework, the chill of grading on January evenings, the roar of undirected student energy, or even weariness from the joy of seeing our students doing well or eager to show us their athletic skills? Jesus reminds us that it is he who feeds us and sustains us with his very being. As De La Salle asks, are we close enough to Jesus that he will sustain us in all that we do? Are we so connected to Christ that our students will see him in us and be fed as well?