grace of God

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Tuesday, 24 June 2014 : Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we celebrate the solemnity of the nativity, or the birth of St. John the Baptist, the herald and messenger of the Messiah, the Holy One, Jesus Christ. Today we celebrate this saint whose works had preceded the Lord, and who prepared Him for His eventual coming into the world, that the works of the Lord might be made ever more wonderful and glorious.

St. John the Baptist was the herald of the Messiah, and he acted as His spokesperson before the whole world, and we all certainly remember what he said to his own disciples, as he encouraged them to follow the Messiah, with the words ‘There is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!’, as a proclamation of truth, that the Messiah has come, and He was in Jesus Christ, identifying Him to the world, and yet many still refused to believe and listen to St. John the Baptist.

The same thing had happened before during the time of the prophets in Israel, when Elijah walked the land, calling for the land and the people to repent their sins and follow the Lord once again, after having indulged for so long in their sinfulness. He was rejected, pursued and hunted by the king, and he was always under the threat of death.

Elijah nevertheless persevered in his works and he continued with his devotion to his mission, calling more and more people to repentance and to a renewed faith in God. He did these all the way until he was called into heaven by the Lord, who sent him away through the flaming chariot. It was well known by the people of Israel that Elijah would one day come again to declare the coming of the Messiah. However, many failed to realise that Elijah had in fact come again into the world.

Yes, St. John the Baptist is Elijah sent again into the world to be the herald and messenger of the Lord, to bring the word of salvation into mankind. St. John the Baptist yet, sadly, encountered a people not much different from the time when he was Elijah, when he laboured hard for the sake of the Lord and His people. Wickedness remained rampant, and there were much evil in the world.

Yet St. John the Baptist did not give up and continued to work hard, often against difficulties and persecutions that were laid up on his path. He was born for that purpose, to deliver the message of God to mankind, to turn their hearts to the Lord, even though eventually not all of them would believe, as the Pharisees and the elders of the people would show.

St. John the Baptist was truly exemplary in his life and in his faith. He had the opportunity to gain glory and fame through his works and missions. And yet he did not indulge in the glory of the world, but he remained true to his mission. He humbly let go of his fame when the Lord Jesus came and began His own work in the world, and his works as the herald completed, he withdrew quietly into the background.

Can we be like him, brothers and sisters? It is not easy, but if we have the will, we can certainly do it. Temptations are great, and in this world, it is especially difficult for us to overcome the temptations of glory and power. This world is in the stage where more and more temptations are growing to prevent our way to the Lord, and the path is increasingly becoming more and more arduous.

But if we never take any action, we will never be able to proceed further, and we will forever be trapped in the trap of glory and power, as well as any other obstacles we have in life. We must be proactive and be confident, and remember the Lord is always on our side, just as He had been with St. John the Baptist. Let St. John the Baptist be an inspiration for us as we live our faith.

Let us all pray, that the Lord will continue to guide us in our lives, so that our lives may be plentiful and happy, filled with love and the Holy Spirit, and that we may practice our faith openly and in a concrete manner in our own lives. Let us help one another to seek the Lord that together we may glorify Him and bring more and more of our brethren into salvation in His hands. God bless us all. Amen.

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Monday, 23 June 2014 : 12th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are brought to an important lesson in life which our Lord wants us to remember at all times. Before we judge or think badly about someone, let us first take a look at our own selves and judge ourselves, that we know the fact, how all of us are in fact equally sinful, equally guilty, and equally wicked, and that we have no right to judge anyone else for we too can be judged in the same way that we have been judged.

In that way, therefore, we should not judge the people of Israel and Judah that we heard in the first reading either. The kingdom of Israel and Judah fell because of the disobedience and the wickedness of their people, who had left behind the Law of God and followed their own ways, committing evil at every turn. But if we judge them for such, will we not be judged similarly as well? We too, at different moments of our lives, failed to live up to our faith and commit things wicked in the sight of God.

But the first reading today is a vivid reminder of what happened if we remain persistent in our faith and not be repentant. The northern kingdom of Israel in particular had been very wicked and unrepentant, that despite the many prophets sent to them, they continued to engage in their rebellion against God, and as a result, they were exiled from the Land given to them and scattered among the nations.

The kingdom of Judah too did not escape the repercussions of their sinfulness and disobedience, since although prophets had been sent to them, as Israel had been, the people refused to listen to these prophets and instead of judging themselves first and repenting from their sins, they judged the prophets, hunting them down and killing them in cold blood. In this, they persisted in their rebelliousness and perish.

Thus, that too, will be our fate, if we remain in our obstinate behaviour and insistence on keeping our sinful ways and our wickedness. We must realise that we have sinned and we are unworthy of the Lord, but instead of blaming others and ourselves, and worse, instead of blaming God, we should really reflect on our own actions, on our own deeds and on our own words, whether in them, we have lived our faith really well, or whether our slander and our actions have hurt others and cause wicked things to occur before God and men.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, let this day be a day of reminder for us, that we may begin on a committed path of life, one that is no longer judgmental and critical for others, but instead, one that is committed to help one another and strengthen one another in faith, and affirm each other in love. May our actions always be based on love, and let us always be with one another, to help each other to reach the Lord together as one. God be with us all. Amen.

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Friday, 20 June 2014 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, today’s readings from the Scripture tell us a strong message that God wants all of us to know. He wants us to realise that we should not crave for human glory and power, or in any form of worldly glory and earthly recognition, but rather instead, we should rely on the Lord and on His precepts, building up our spiritual account rather than piling up our earthly and material wealth.

It is not necessarily wrong for us to gain and accumulate wealth or possession, as the material and the goods themselves are neutral and are capable indeed for both good and evil, as I have often mentioned. We do need them to satisfy the basic needs of our life, and we also can use them to accomplish many good things for others around us.

The problem and the danger comes when we begin to lose sight on the purpose of our lives and the purpose of what we have with us. We end up succumbing to our own personal emotions and human vulnerabilities, which end up in us committing sins before men and before God. Such is what had happened in the first reading that we heard today, on the story of the rise and fall of Queen Athaliah of Judea.

Queen Athaliah was the wife of King Joram of Judea, who met his end together with King Ahaziah of the northern kingdom of Israel, when God meted out His punishment to the house of Ahab, who had brought much wickedness to the northern kingdom. With the death of the king, then one of his sons should have taken over his position as king of Judea. However, as we saw and heard, that was not how things turned out to be.

Queen Athaliah decided to take matters and power into her own hands. As she was not of the House of David, she had absolutely no right to rule in her own right as the Queen of Judea. Yet, she did what she did, and she took power into her own hands after murdering many sons and children of her husband the deceased king, and then installed herself in power, thinking that she had removed all obstacles and were then secure.

Her example was a clear-cut example of how things will go if we allow pride and human desire, in our greed and want, to take over our being, our heart, mind and soul. It corrupted her and many other people throughout history, causing them to fall into the trap of power which the devil had set up to attack us at our most vulnerable, that is our pride, ego and our desire.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we must not let our pride, ego and desire to get the better of us, and we have to learn to control them, so that we may avoid what had happened to men and women throughout the centuries, as exemplified by Queen Athaliah, making them to fall into sin and committing things evil in the sight of God and mankind. We must forgo our pride and allow God to come into our love, and speak within our hearts. We have to listen to Him and find out what His will is for us.

In our world today, we are inundated with many things of the world, where achievements, glories, and the power among men are preeminent. Those who have more of all these will receive human approval and praise, and those who have less or none of those will be looked down upon and rejected by the society. This is the hard reality of the world we are living in now.

So what are we to do, brothers and sisters? What should we do? Most importantly, we need to do something that many of us had often not done, in the midst of our busy life schedules, that is to pray, and pray genuinely to the Lord our God. This prayer is not just empty prayers and a prayer without meaning or understanding. A prayer is a conversation with God, a two-way conversation in which we speak with God and He speaks with us.

That is how we should act, to bring ourselves ever closer to God and keeping ourselves always in touch with Him, and there is no better way to do this other than through prayer. Yes, prayer that is made with the heart and through the heart, when we open the doors of our hearts and minds to God who then may keep in touch with us and touch our heart with His love.

May the Lord guide us in our ways and our lives, so that we may not follow the path of decadence and evil, controlling our emotions and avoid falling into the temptation of power and pride, and give ourselves totally to God’s love and providence. May He bless us all always and forever. Amen.

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Wednesday, 18 June 2014 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 30 : 20, 21, 24

How great is the goodness which You have stored for those who fear You, which You show, for all to see, to those who take refuge in You!

In the shelter of Your presence You hide them from human wiles; You keep them in Your dwelling, safe from the intrigues of wagging tongues.

Love the Lord, all you His saints! The Lord preserves His faithful, but He fully requites the arrogant.

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Monday, 16 June 2014 : 11th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Brothers and sisters in Christ, what Jesus mentioned in today’s Scripture readings is the concept of do ut des, which is a Latin expression for the concept of vengeance for evil done by one to another. The examples are as what Jesus had shown, and which can also be found in the first books of the Old Testament.

This law is a very harsh law, which was established through Moses, to punish misbehaviours and evils in the society of the people of God, by punishment equivalent to the evil that had been done earlier. The afflicted party or the relatives of the afflicted may pursue the perpetrator and claim damage in equivalent term as what the perpetrator had damaged in the victim.

If someone caused another to be injured in a way, then the victim is entitled and indeed encouraged to do the exact revenge and commit the same injury to the former. And if that someone caused someone to lose his or her life, then the relatives of the victim is entitled to, and indeed was encouraged to pursue the perpetrator to death, to cry out for his blood, as a vengeance for the victim’s blood.

However, this law in its interpretation, and indeed, in its true purpose, had been misunderstood and misused, so often that it had misguided the people in their approach to the Lord, and instead of helping the people to seek God, often it made them corrupted and losing the focus of their faith instead. This was clear example how divine law is made flawed through feeble human interpretations.

God does not find pleasure in the destruction of the people, even the wicked ones, and He desires that all of us are brought back to Himself. It is mankind themselves who desire the destruction of their own kind, through their sinfulness, our sinfulness and wickedness, indeed, which brought about such sad and unfortunate incidents as what had happened in the first reading today.

The murder of Naboth the vineyard owner by King Ahab who desired his good vineyard was the clear example of human wickedness in their greed and desire for material goods and for possessions. It is this greed which pushes us to commit things that are not according to the Lord’s laws and commandments, causing us to do things that hurt others or even cause loss of life, as what had happened to Naboth’s case.

King Ahab misused his authority and power, and pushed along by his infamous wife, Queen Jezebel, who encouraged him to set false witnesses to accuse Naboth and acquire his lands for himself. Mankind often try many different methods and ways, and often ways that are not morally upright, in order to get what they want. This is one of the great vices of mankind, which King Ahab demonstrated perfectly.

We may then ask, why did the Lord then, come out with such a vile law in the first place? Was He not the One behind everything by placing such strict and manipulable law in place? The reason is because of the people of Israel was so rebellious in their ways and they continuously refused to listen to the Lord’s words and His will, so much that He truly had no other choice but to impose such law and set of rules in order to ensure that His people obeyed and behaved themselves.

Why, brethren? Why is this so? There is only one answer, and that answer is love, the love that God has for all of us. His love was so great that, He imposed such a law to make sure that as few people as possible went against the way of righteousness and thus fell into sin and damnation. And that was also why, the Lord did not intend for such a law to remain forever. When Jesus, the Messiah came into the world, He revealed through Him, that the true purpose and intention of the Lord, was truly, Love.

Mankind should not have sought the destruction of one another through revenge and hatred. Instead, they must love one another as Christ had taught them through His disciples. Revenge and hatred in do ut des will merely beget more and more hatred and vengeance in an endless cycle of destruction. We have to break this cycle, and stop the chain of vengeance and hatred. And how to do so? Again, through love, and also through forgiveness.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us reflect on our own lives and our actions. Have we been truly faithful children of God and listen to the will of our Father who loves us? Or have we instead been more like the Israelites and the Jews of the past, who disobeyed the Lord despite having seen His power, and preferred the corrupting nature of our world?

Let us all therefore from now on, commit ourselves to love the Lord our Father, that we may grow stronger in our faith, and in our dedication to His ways. Let us cast away far, far away, any sinful acts or corruptions that tend to keep us away from the loving grace of our God. May the Lord be with us this day, and every single day of our lives. May He bless us and empower us to live more faithfully to Him with each passing day. God bless us all. Amen.

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Sunday, 15 June 2014 : Solemnity of the Most Blessed Trinity, Trinity Sunday (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we heard the truth about the Lord our God from the Scripture readings, in which God revealed Himself to be a God of love and justice, who loved His people with all of His heart, showing mercy when we the people sin before Him, and is slow to anger when we commit something wicked in His eyes, and wicked as we are, He was willing to give it all in order to save us, and that was through the sending of His Son Jesus into the world in order to save it.

Today we celebrate this nature of our Lord, who is the Most Holy Trinity, one but three, and three but one. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the most intimate truth and nature of our Lord who loves us. And the three forms the Divine Persons of the One and only God, which is one God in His absolute singularity, but with three equal Divine Persons, the Father as the Creator and loving God, the Son as the Word and the Judge of all creations, and the Holy Spirit as the guide and the source of all life.

The Holy Trinity worked in perfect harmony with each other, in the Lord who made all things possible and existent. The Lord God had been ever-present since before the beginning of time and all things, and though He existed in perfect love and harmony, He wanted to have others to be with Him. Therefore, He created this universe, filled with all of its wonders, through the works of the Trinity who made them all possible.

The Father willed creation into being, and through His Word, the Son, who we know now as Jesus Christ, He spoke the word and creation was made. Then the Holy Spirit filled all things with life and beauty, and make creation to be as wonderful as we behold and see it now. Yet, behind all those beauty and apparent perfections, ever since the beginning of time, after mankind had been created, sin and imperfections had entered creation.

God is indeed loving, merciful and committed to us His beloved creations, and even more so because we are the greatest of His creations, being created in His own image, and He breathed life directly into us. We were the dearest of His creatures, and He called us children, just as we ought to call Him our Father. However, we have been tainted with sin ever since our ancestors disobeyed our loving God, by listening to the deception of the devil instead of the love of God.

Remember, brethren, that while the Lord is loving and forgiving, and slow to anger as described, but the Lord who is also good and perfectly good, will not stand evil or sin to be in His presence. That was why Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, was cast out of the Garden of Eden and could no longer live in the direct presence of God. They were no longer worthy to be in the presence of God because of their sins.

Then why do the prophets and leaders like Moses, Elijah and others did not dare to look up and face the Lord when He came to meet with them and talk with them directly. This was because of the fear that the Lord’s perfection and goodness reflected in His face would indeed be too much for our sinful selves to bear, and thus none dared to look upon Him.

But God, our Lord is loving and forgiving, and He wanted every single one of us His children to be reconciled with Him and be reunited with Him, so much so that He gave us His ultimate gift and love, in the person of the Son, Jesus Christ, who was Word, and is Word of God, but incarnated into flesh, the flesh of mankind, and to assume the humble aspect of humanity, fully man and fully divine.

The beginning of the Gospel of St. John clearly explained this occurrence, when the Word became flesh, and when God made Himself completely approachable by His beloved people. Through Jesus mankind saw directly the fullness of God’s eternal love for us, and in His face, we realise that we are truly beloved by Him, for we had been created in His very own image.

Jesus passed down the divine authority from the Lord to His own disciples, to forgive our sins and cleanse our faults, and made that forgiveness and mercy complete and perfect through the offering of His own self on the cross, and by becoming the Paschal Lamb of sacrifice, He made us worthy once again for the Lord, for those of us who accepted His sacrifice through our baptism.

When we were baptised, we were sealed with the Most Holy Name of the Sacred Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which signified that we had been marked as the possessions of God, and that from then on, we are part of the Lord’s grace and blessing. But yet, we cannot just remain idle, and instead we must have a living and vibrant faith, one that is inspired by the love of God, and which we use to the fullest, in order to bring goodness to one another, fellow brethren in the Lord.

Today’s celebration of the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity is a constant reminder that God loves us, and very much indeed that no matter how heavy our sins are, He is willing to forgive us, and from there, bring us all back into His embrace. And the mystery of the Holy Trinity is also part of the history of our salvation. The Lord our Father created us, and through His Word and Spirit, He made us be.

Then when we faltered, He promised us salvation through the Messiah, who was none other than the Son, who then took away the sins of the world through His death, and from Him and the Father came the Spirit that rejuvenated mankind and brought the wisdom and understanding of the truth to all of us. The actions of the Trinity were the concrete proof of the love and dedication that God has for us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is imperative for us to contemplate and reflect on our own lives and actions, whether we have been faithful and committed to the Lord, just as He had committed Himself to us? Have we been like what we are expected to be since the day of our baptism? We have been empowered by the Spirit and endowed with the gift of love from God, and there is indeed great potential inside each and every one of us.

However, this potential will forever remain just as that, a potential and useless if we do not make use of them and remain idle. We must cooperate and work together with the Lord, in order to benefit our lives and also the lives of those around us. We have to have a living and genuine faith, brethren, and we cannot just pay lip service to the Lord for our faith. Be committed, be dedicated, and let us all do our best to show our love to God, who had loved us first.

May the Most Holy Trinity, who had sealed us through baptism, continue to endow us with grace and blessings, that we may grow stronger in our faith and love for Him, and gain in the end of all things, the gift of everlasting life in heaven. God bless us all, now and forever. Amen!

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Saturday, 14 June 2014 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time (Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, again I have to emphasize today, of the importance placed on the understanding of the laws of God and His true intention, rather than blindly following rules without understanding, and take things literally without proper discernment and thinking. This is the essence of serving the Lord and His people, just as Elisha, son of Shaphat had been called long ago to serve God’s people.

Some Christians like to take things in the Scriptures literally, as it had been written, even going as far as proclaiming the Holy Scriptures as the sole truth and the sole authority of the faith in the process of salvation. This is what is called the sola scriptura approach, popular among Protestants who in their heretical and misguided thinking, they thought that their understanding of the Scriptures is sufficient to guide them in faith and in life.

However, as we know, this is very wrong, and by depending on their interpretations, human interpretation that is flawed and imperfect, they have erroneously practiced their faith, thinking that we faithful cannot make oaths or anything similar, out of fear of sinning and going against the Lord’s will. But this is not in fact what Jesus meant when He said what He said in the Gospel today. This is the danger of literally interpreting whatever Jesus said and hold onto them as if they are inviolable laws.

Jesus liked to preach to the people of God in parables, through the use of stories and links to real-life contexts, which has two purposes. First, this facilitates understanding by the people, in consideration that most of them at the time were illiterate, and therefore unlikely to have strong background knowledge of what they have in the Scripture, and whatever they believe in, is mostly the oral traditions passed down through the generations and through the teachings of the priests.

But these, as we know it, were imperfect knowledge, since mankind had limited and feeble intelligence that is incapable of comprehending the fullness of the truth in the word of God, except if it is revealed to them through the Holy Spirit, or through the teaching of the Prophets. Those who trust only in the Holy Scriptures and in their flawed understanding on them, is being foolish.

This links to the second purpose of Jesus’ preaching using parables and stories to the people. If the first purpose is to make the teachings more understandable to the faithful, who were mostly farmers, fishermen and shepherds, and that was why so many of Jesus’ parables involve the terms that these people were familiar with, the second purpose is in fact to hide the true meaning of the word of God before it is time for them to be fully understood by the people.

Jesus Himself highlighted this, and He showed how the meaning of the words He had spoken had to remain hidden for a while until the appointed time when the Lord was to reveal Himself in His entirety to the world. But Jesus Himself did explain the meaning of His parables to the disciples, especially when they asked Him what He meant as He taught the people with those parables.

Yet, even after that, the disciples still did not understand perfectly, and as we know, there were many moments when they failed to understand what was to happen with Christ, especially when He suffered trial and death, when He was crucified on Calvary, and finally when He was risen from the dead, and the tomb of Jesus became empty.

It was through the Holy Spirit, the Advocate and Helper, that the Lord chose to reveal His truth to the people of God in its fullness. The Apostles and disciples received the Holy Spirit, and it was from them that the teachings of Jesus, the word of God, and the true intentions of the Lord were made clear to the people. The Scriptures, that is the New Testament section including the Holy Gospels themselves were written by the disciples inspired and filled with the Holy Spirit, to provide the people with understanding of their faith.

So what did Jesus mean then, by what He had said today? He did not mean to completely ban vowing and oath-making from us, and not to condemn us if we do so. What Jesus had meant was in fact that, whenever we do something and commit ourselves to something, especially when we say it verbally, we must truly mean everything that we spoke of, and we also have to take them seriously in mind and heart.

If we do not desire to do something, then we should not lie and make a false oath or vow. That is evil. And if we desire to do something, then it is more important and meaningful for us to go and act on it rather than just making empty promises and be slothful about it. That is the true essence of the Lord’s message to us. Rather than blaspheming against God by lying in His Name or on anything that He had created, it is best for us as Christians, to go forth and do all things that is right, immediately and with full consciousness.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have to keep alive the teachings and the knowledge which had been passed down to us through the Church, that is the deposit of faith. The Church alone is the custodian of this deposit of faith, which keeps us all anchored firmly to the Lord and His truth, and we have to keep it and follow it through. Let us not fall to the attempts of the devil to discredit the faith or the Church through his lies.

May God continue to guard us, keep us in His grace and love, and empower us to remain always in His truth and receive much blessing. May God be with us all, always. Amen.

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Saturday, 14 June 2014 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green or White (Saturday Mass of our Lady)

Psalm 15 : 1-2a and 5, 7-8, 9-10

Keep me safe, o God, for in You I take refuge. I say to the Lord, “O Lord, my inheritance and my cup, my chosen portion – hold secure my lot.”

I bless the Lord who counsels me; even at night my inmost self instructs me. I keep the Lord always before me; for with Him at my right hand, I will never be shaken.

My heart, therefore, exults, my soul rejoices; my body too will rest assured. For You will not abandon my soul to the grave, nor will You suffer Your Holy One to see decay in the land of the dead.

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Tuesday, 10 June 2014 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : Green

Psalm 4 : 2-3, 4-5, 7-8

Answer when I call, o God, my Justice! When I was in distress, You gave me solace. Have compassion on me and hear my plea. And you people, how long will you harden your hearts? How long will you delight in deceit and go in search of falsehood?

But you must know that the Lord has shown His kindness to me. When I call to Him, He hears me. Be angry, but do not offend. Keep your words to yourself, when you are in bed, and be still.

Many ask, “Who will give us a happy time? Would that His favour shine upon us!” You, o Lord, have put joy in my heart; more than by giving me wine and food.

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Tuesday, 10 June 2014 : 10th Week of Ordinary Time (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : Green

1 Kings 17 : 7-16

After a while, the brook dried up because no rain had fallen in the land. Then YHVH spoke to Elijah, “Go to Zarephath of the Sidonites and stay there. I have given word to a widow there to give you food.”

So Elijah went to Zarephath. On reaching the gate of the town, he saw a widow gathering sticks. He called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel that I may drink.”

As she was going to bring it, he called after her and said, “Bring me also a piece of bread.” But she answered, “As YHVH your God lives, I have no bread left but only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am just now gathering some sticks so that I may go in and prepare something for myself and my son to eat – and die.”

Elijah then said to her, “Do not be afraid. Go and do as you have said, but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me; then make some for yourself and your son. For this is the word of YHVH, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of meal shall not be emptied nor shall the jug of oil fail, until the day when YHVH sends rain to the earth.”

So she went and did as Elijah told her; and she had food for herself, Elijah and her son from that day on. The jar of flour was not emptied nor did the jug of oil fail, in accordance with what YHVH had said through Elijah.