Prepare Food for The Journey

Prepare Food for The Journey

Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

The children of Israel set out from Rameses for Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, not counting the little ones. A crowd of mixed ancestry also went up with them, besides their livestock, very numerous flocks, and herds. Since the dough they had brought out of Egypt was not leavened, they baked it into unleavened loaves. They had rushed out of Egypt and had no opportunity even to prepare food for the journey. Exodus 12:37-39

When Jesus realized this, he withdrew from that place. Many people followed him, and he cured them all, but he warned them not to make Him known. Matthew 12:15-16

Piety

Did you know that Buzz Aldrin celebrated Communion on the surface of the moon? He certainly prepared food for the ultimate Exodus.

“This is the LM pilot,” Aldrin said, referring to the lunar module. “I would like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”

Roger, Tranquility Base!

Aldrin took a moment to read silently from John 15:5, which he had scrawled on a 3-by-5-inch card: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me.”

The astronaut then set about performing the Christian ritual making him the first person to celebrate a religious rite on a heavenly body other than Earth. The very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were the bread and wine, Body and Blood, of Communion.

Talk about a moment closest to God!

Study

Yesterday, we read about the first Passover and today we find the Hebrews on-the-move making their encampment at Succoth.

Digging deeper into names and places, we will find that the name “Sukkot” (Succoth) appears in several places in the Hebrew Bible as a location. The Egyptian place Sukkot is the second of the stations of the Exodus (after Ramses). After the plagues and the “pass-over,” Pharaoh ordered the Israelites to leave Egypt. They journeyed from their starting point at Rameses to Succoth (Exodus 12:37). Both appear to be towns within the Land of Goshen, which is generally believed to be in the eastern Nile Delta.

A Succoth also is the name of the temporary dwelling in which farmers would live during harvesting, a fact connecting to the agricultural significance of the holiday stressed by the Book of Exodus. The religious significance commemorates the Exodus and the dependence of the People of Israel on the will of God (Leviticus 23:42-43).

Succoth also is known as the Festival of Tabernacles. It is a biblical Jewish holiday celebrated from late September to late October. Jewish families erect huts as a symbol of the camps where their ancestors slept during the Exodus. Succoth recalls the fragile dwellings in which the Israelites slept during 40 years of travel in the desert after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. Throughout the holiday, Jewish families eat meals inside the Succoth and many people sleep there as well.

Jesus never stopped being a prophet on-the-move. Sensing the gathering plot against him by the Pharisees, he left, and people followed him. He did this, not out of his sense of self-preservation but to fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah.

Action

We, too, remain a people on the move. Today is the 50th anniversary of perhaps humanity’s most fabulous journey to explore the heavens and land on the moon.

Where were you on July 20, 1969? Were you on the move? Did you prepare food for the journey? 

The night of July 20-21, 1969, Pope Paul VI spent time looking at the moon through the telescope of the Vatican Observatory at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. Then he watched the actual landing and the first moonwalk on television.

“Man has a natural urge to explore the unknown, to know the unknown; yet man also has a fear of the unknown,” Pope Paul told the three astronauts in a private audience in October. “Your bravery has transcended this fear and through your intrepid adventure man has taken another step toward knowing more of the universe.”

Pope Paul told the men that the time, energy, talents, resources, and teamwork behind their successful trip “pay tribute to the capacity of modern man to reach beyond himself, to reach beyond human nature, to attain the perfection of achievement made possible by his God-given talent.”

While technology could allow humanity to reach great heights, its use for good or evil always depended on human minds and hearts.

“The human heart absolutely must become freer, better and more religious as machines, weapons, and the instruments people have at their disposition become more powerful,” he during an Angelus address.

Adding that “hunger still afflicts entire populations,” Pope Paul asks us across the years and miles:

        Where is real humanity?

        Where is brotherhood?

        Where is peace?

Roger, Tranquility Base and your little sukkot LM!