The Elijah stories in 1 Kings are some of my favorites. We know that he was a heroic figure for many prophets, especially those who had a contemplative dimension to their prayer-life. Carmelites world-wide consider him the ancient model of their religious order to this day. He’s a man with many dimensions – a healer, a fighter, often fearless. People asked, much later in history, if John the Baptist – or Jesus – were Elijah… In today’s Gospel, we see a widowed mother, preparing a last supper for herself and her son. They knew that this meal would be their final one when Elijah approached them and asked the mother to share their meal with him. Amazingly, she agreed to do it. Those were ancient times – but the story continues…

In 1944, a French Carmelite priest, Pere Jacques Bunel, a prisoner in a Nazi death camp, ministered to his fellow prisoners and gave nearly all of his small rations to them each day. Unlike the widow and her son, who were rewarded for her generosity to Elijah, Pere Jacques died one month after the camp was liberated. He weighed only 75 pounds. Did I mention that he was imprisoned for saving Jewish children during the Holocaust? He was the headmaster of a school, and hid Jewish children under assumed names, protecting them from certain death.

What can we learn from this widow, her son, and Pere Jacques? She held to the traditional belief that guests must be offered food – maybe she remembered the story of Abraham and Sarah, and how their hospitality to strangers was rewarded by a great gift from God – the birth of Isaac. She might have believed as they did, that sometimes strangers are angels in disguise… Pere Jacques held fast to the gospel of Jesus. We know, however, from witnesses and letters, that Pere Jacques’ fellow prisoners thought that he was some sort of angel – he kept them from despair during terrible times and kept them alive with his own food.

Such great love – to give all we have to another…

I know how those times were – my uncle, Richard Hathway, was a POW whose best friend died of starvation in his arms in Stalag 4-B, near the end of World War II…

Lord, make us always be merciful and generous…and may we always feed the hungry who come to our door…

Dorothy A. Hathway, CSJA