Date: June 18, 2020 ()

Bible Text: SIR 48:1-14 |

Series:

The first reading today contains the brief summary of the life of the prophet Elijah shedding light on how great a prophet he was. He had done almost everything what Jesus also did. He performed signs and wonders, raised the dead to life, and was also taken up to the sky in a fiery chariot by a whirl wind. He was a great man but he lived to be the simplest man we would know.

Knowing him deeper, Elijah was what we could call a mountain man. But he was a mountain man who walked with God. He had developed the character of a sojourner, one who was separated from the lifestyle of his day. He was a man with a light grip on the details of life; a man willing and able to pick up and go if God said to go. He was not bogged down, chained by his comfort zones or by a desire for the material details of life. He stands in striking contrast to the affluent inhabitants of Samaria and especially the perverted Baal priests who wore white linen gowns, high pointed bonnets, and lived on the delicacies of the palace. Elijah, on the contrary, wore a garment of black camel’s hair girded with a leather belt about his waist to hold in his garment for freer movement. His dress and lifestyle demonstrated his devotion to the Lord and separation from the worldly.

These things were not hidden from the knowledge of Elisha who would become his successor. Elisha already had an understanding that he would need to leave behind all his possessions and his loved ones as well, if he were to be free in following the call of the Lord. By doing so, they both abandoned themselves solely to the providence of God.

In the prayer that our Lord Jesus taught us, we are always reminded of the gospel’s call to live the virtue of simplicity. Simplicity means to rely on the daily providence of God and to desire nothing more than God alone - to desire for his kingdom, to desire his will, to desire for his daily bread especially his Word being our spiritual nourishment, to desire for His mercy, to learn forgiveness as we were generously forgiven, and to be free from worldly temptations and allurements.

Hence in the recitation of the Lord’s prayer, we realize that Jesus does not only teach us how to pray, but he also teaches us how to live.