The Love of God Conquers All

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Flannery O’Connor once wrote:

“What people don’t realize is how much religion costs.

They think faith is a big electric blanket,

when of course, it is the cross.”

If you are anything like me, you may bristle at this statement.

Who in their right mind runs to the cross?

What makes it possible for us to embrace hardships, to put aside self-indulgence, and

indifference to the sufferings of others and the earth,

“to lay down our lives,”

for the people we love and for the common good?

What strengthens us when, like Jesus,

we experience the cross in the overwhelming forces of evil and death that

threaten our human flourishing and

the well-being of our planet?

The prophet Elijah, whom we meet in our first reading,

hints at an answer.

We first encounter Elijah in the prime of his prophetic mission

born by God into a fierce battle against the king and queen of Israel, Ahab and Jezebel.

These power-hungry rulers violate the Covenant,

desecrate the sacred altars,

kill the prophets, and lead Israel into

worshiping false gods.

While Elijah witnessed with mighty signs the

power of God among the people,

Ahab and Jezebel are not converted and

vengefully seek his death.

In terror, Elijah flees the cost of discipleship.

He is paralyzed by fear and despair, his spirit crushed.

He tells God, “It is enough; I am done; take my life now.”

Wishing to escape reality and all its pain,

he sits under a solitary tree and falls asleep,

wrapped in his electric blanket.

You may be as surprised as I was by the next scene.

With a gentle and humble heart, God looks upon Elijah with compassion and

offers him no rebuke, no reprimand.

Instead, God sends a kindly angel to

strengthen him with warm cakes and water and then to

accompany him across the desert to God’s mountain.

After Elijah has rested,

God greets him and seeks to know his heart’s desire.

God asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Elijah pours out his story, and God listens with loving kindness.

Elijah is told to wait on the mountain for God to “pass by.”

On the mountain’s edge, he experiences a

ferocious wind, an earthquake, and a fire;

God is not present there but in a “gentle whisper.”

Wrapped in awe and reverence,

Elijah enters divine communion.

God asks him again: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Recalling his scrape with death, this one question

provokes an avalanche of questions for Elijah:

What do you value most?

What gives you meaning and purpose?

Who are you, and whose are you?

What larger story are you a part of?

God poses the most vital spiritual question

every human being must answer: What are you doing here?

Can you hear God asking you this question? What are you doing here?

What supreme reality can claim your whole heart and

free you to live for one another, to love at any cost?

Elijah answers these questions not with words but with his life.

He has rested in the warmth of God’s loving arms.

With spirit renewed, liberated from fear,

he rededicates himself to participate in God’s saving plan for Israel.

In his darkest hour, he discovers that “God is Love,” as John’s first letter states,

“those who abide in love,

abide in God, and God in them….

We love because God first loved us” (1 Jn 4:16, 19).

Elijah whispers to us across the centuries,

what strengthens us in the shadow of the cross

is God’s ever-present, unsurpassed love,

making us “participants in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4) and “friends of God, and prophets” (Ws 7:27).

Likewise, Jesus assures us as he did Peter and his disciples

tossed on the deadly storm at sea,

“Come to me. Don’t be afraid.

Step into the troubled waters; I am holding you by the hand.

I am with you always, and our friendship has no end.

Wrapped in God’s love, perhaps we will become like Jesus, whom Catherine of Siena called a

“mad lover” who ran to his cross.

“It was not nails, she says, but love that kept him on the cross.”

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