There is a time to go, but also a time to be lived before you go.
Our life on earth can become an experience for when you want to depart on head on home now to God. I’ve heard people voice that desire aloud to me, oh, numerous times in ministry. Can’t the Good Lord take me home now?!
I know a priest missionary to South America who is in a difficult place and assignment. He puts in one hundred percent effort in his mission life. Yet he will take an annual two-week vacation back to the USA and locally—though it is half-spent in fundraising for the mission work. I saw him and asked him of how it’s going. He said: “I love serving the people and the Lord down there… but I want to get to heaven soon. I’m real homesick for that!”
He is my age and I don’t see Heaven’s call happening soon for him, but he wants it sooner rather than later. All I can tell him is that “there is a time to go, but also a time to be lived before you go.”
Friends, in today’s reading (Sunday)—we have Elijah wanting to wrap things up in his prophet ministry, but an angel prods him to keep going at it. Elijah is ready for check-out twice, for a quitting rest. But no—he is revived to do more, with a 40 day/ 40 night walk to Mt. Horeb ahead of him. Hey! That’s a hike!
For the Holy Day (Thursday), we have Mary living on many months beyond her seeing Jesus’ triumph and Resurrection from the dead and Ascension to Glory. One might think how she would have been ready for her sleep into death and assumption from the time that the Ascension or Pentecost had come. Really! But her day of going home to Heaven is delayed quite a bit, for some ministry on earth left to do. Hey! Hadn’t she done enough or most of what was expected of her?
Apparently, the Lord Jesus had need of her on earth a bit longer. 2
We don’t understand the reasons behind these things. Usually there is an underlying blessing for the one living this plan out (which God may or may not reveal to us) or there’s a blessing to a recipient connected to that person, from the one kept in such a holding pattern by God. God has a grace to extend by means of that person’s life on earth.
I will explain more on Elijah’s need to keep going, but first let me introduce one pastoral experience, one of less drama.
I’ve been a chaplain to seniors and elderly all through my priesthood. From my first assignment in Rockville, I’ve met people like Pierra, a resident in an assisted-living place under my chaplaincy, and from my first week of a three-year parish assignment there, she reminded me in my every weekly visit of her readiness to go from this world. Every single time, until I said: “Maybe you feel ready, but maybe God’s time for it isn’t right yet. God knows, but maybe your continued example of trust in God and waiting on God is an inspiration to someone who needs a little more of it from you. Be like a St. Monica and keep interceding for people in your life who need conversion to God. Someone might need it! Try not to keep thinking and saying so much of how you want to die and go, for God’s got your message. Pierra, long for some deeper experience of God of your present situation. Dying will come, but living is what you have to do presently.
There is a time to go, but also a time to be lived before you go.
Pierra lived on for many years in that home, nearly outliving everybody. ☺ She didn’t get home by badgering God about it, but by faithfully waiting her turn, and loving life until it passed. She learned to be an intercessor from her bedside, and a loving face to her visitors of a golden-oldie Catholic. I got transferred far away and I never saw her again. One day a St. Mary’s parishioner called me that she had peacefully passed. Now may Pierra be at rest!
Elijah was in the desert, sitting under the broom tree, praying for death. “This is enough, O Lord.”
But what was left for Elijah? MUCH! He’d see angels minister to him, with cakes and water. On his wilderness pilgrimage, ravens were to minister by flying in food for him. Wow. A mother and son were to show him compassion, in which he’d see a replenishing food miracle. Amazing. A special moment at Mt. Horeb would then come in the stillness of a cave: it deeply moved the prophet. He now had deep as a cave holy encounters with God through this holding on in life.
There is a time to go, but also a time to be lived before you go.
God needed Elijah next to anoint Hazael for king of Syria and Jehu for king of Israel, setting in motion a prophetic challenge to Baal worship, which had been ruining God’s covenant people. Elijah then would inspire Elisha to become a prophet, and to be his successor—and then, and only then—was God ready to take Elijah home.
He gets that chariot ride to the skies, so he leaves in amazing style.
The upward moment of Elijah has some sure connection to Mary’s Assumption upward moment, which we honor with a holy day (Aug.15) –just days following the Transfiguration Feast of the Church (Aug. 6), which had involved Elijah as a Victor figure for Christ.
Mary’s extended life, which went for many months into the apostolic Church, has meaning for us today, of her living out more life on earth. (Mary probably lived up into her 50’s, to then die in her dormition. Scholars say she was given prayer knowledge that it was coming and she asked St. John to take her to Jerusalem, her home city, for her “rest” to occur. There is no burial site for Mary; of course, since she was taken away bodily too.)
Mary’s ministry as Mother to the First Church has a special effect that even lasts to today as Mother of the Church to us. She is shared out by God to us. Jesus had said it at The Cross: “Behold, your Mother.” So, she not only was His mother, to inspire His own ministry—but she is given to inspire us all, starting with the churches of Ephesus and Jerusalem in the First Century. There was a reason for her staying on for many months onward. Then came her Assumption day, and she flew up to Heaven in style, body and soul, to become Queen of Heaven! In God’s right time.
We now have an access to Mary as Mother that is a heavenly one meant for the Church’s life on earth. That’s the purpose of her time being extended on earth, when it seemed it would rather had been right for her to go soon after Jesus Rose and Ascended. For God has His purposes for us….
Lastly, let me go back to Elijah. His willingness (after being prodded) to live on in life, though not feeling the inspiration for it at the time under the broom tree—led to him being a model for Israel to be faithful to the end, and for Jesus Himself to be faithful to the end for us in establishing the New Covenant. Jesus Himself borrowed much from the example of Elijah—think of Jesus’ own 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness (and surviving it as Elijah had). Think of Jesus’ power for miracles, even in being truly human among us as Messiah. He recalled Elijah. Think of Jesus letting others minister to Him (like Elijah did). Think of Jesus ready to take the turn of His passionate, suffering finish. Who does Jesus bring to the Mountain? Elijah! Think of Jesus finding extra strength to make it to the end of a grueling Way of the Cross and Crucifixion. Yet He knows He’ll be raised in power. He thinks of the favor once granted to Elijah who flew home.
Elijah lived in the Old Testament, back in the 9th century BC. Yet he impacts Jesus Christ Himself in A.D. 33. I bet he never thought his second-wind would have meant so much, as in his will to keep going on. But it meant much.
Jesus with Moses and Elijah ministering to His side. Transfiguration.
Up up and away, Elijah!
18th Sunday First Reading Excerpt 1st Kings 19
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!”
Assumption of Mary Feast Day Scriptures
From the Psalm: Lord, go up to the place of your rest, you and the ark of your holiness.
For the LORD has chosen Zion; He prefers her for his dwelling.
“Zion is my resting place forever; in her will I dwell, for I prefer her.”
R. Lord, go up to the place of your rest, you and the ark of your holiness.
The Gospel
While Jesus was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” He replied, “Rather (or even more truly and deeply), blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
Fr. John Barry Resurrection Parish Burtonsville, Md. 20866