Our reading from 1st Kings picks up with Elijah hiding in a cave on Mount Horeb. Prior to this moment he had a lived a life that had experienced great miracles. Fire was just called down from heaven on Mount Carmel to defeat the prophets of Baal. Yet when threatened by Queen Jezebel he panicked, lost faith, and fled into the wilderness.
Despite all the big stuff that Elijah had experienced his heart had not yet been permanently transformed to have complete faith in God. The imagery of wind, earthquake, and fire represent to us the big, external, noisy, and emotional events of life. If our faith depends upon constant emotional heights or dramatic signs we will always be left wanting more.
Saint John of the Cross uses the term “spiritual gluttony” to describe what happens when we look for God primarily in big, emotional, or miraculous events. He observed that beginners in the spiritual life often become addicted to feeling good during prayer and seeking out intense emotional highs. He argued that when hunt for such sensations we are seeking ourselves, not God.
Elijah came to hear God’s voice not in a massive event, but through a small voice. God does not force Himself on us through overwhelming force. Rather, He speaks to us in the interior quiet of the soul. In order to hear a whisper you have to learn to be quiet and enter into interior silence. Through interior silence we recognize the movement of the Holy Spirit in our life.
The Eucharist serves as the perfect example of such a reality. The Lord does not come upon the altar with thunder and lighting, but through silence. Those who look upon the Eucharist do not see some massive sensation for they look upon bread and wine. Through faith we are able to acknowledge that what we look upon is truly the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ.
As people of faith we do not need new private revelations or spectacular signs in order to be saved or know of God’s love for us. The fullness of truth has already been handed down to us through Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Sacraments. We do not need a dramatic spiritual experience in order to be a person of faith because all we have to focus on is the ordinary.
Elijah didn’t need another display of lightning; he needed rest. He needed to eat the bread that the angel gave him and to listen to that voice that told him to get back to his ordinary mission. This relates well to Saint Peter who was able to walk on water in so far as he kept his sight on Jesus. The moment he shifted his attention to the wind and waves he sunk. It is easy for us to shift our sight to such signs and also take our sight off of Jesus.
As people of faith let us stop chasing after the storm (however it may manifest itself in our life) and instead come to abide in the quiet, sufficient grace that He has already given to each of us. Through such assistance from God we can go back to our ordinary life and do in the words of St. Therese of Lisieux, “ordinary things with extraordinary love.”
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