‘I’ve had enough’ – these words of Elijah in the first reading of today’s mass resonate with many of us. How many times have we said I’ve had enough? We find Elijah worn out and discouraged, praying for death, a day’s journey into the desert. He’s sick and tired of being God’s prophet; he wants to throw in the towel. We all have experienced feelings of discouragement like this. During my 38 years as a priest I have felt like giving up, some of you in your long married lives have felt like giving up, many young people have felt like giving up their studies, etc. In Croatia women have a great devotion to St. Anthony, especially young girls praying for a husband. One girl was fed up one day and threw statue out the window; it hit a young man passing by and she ended up marrying this man. The message in our first reading is that what seems like defeat and the absence of God is shown not to be the case. Even though Elijah is discouraged and dispirited God is very close to him. So it is with us; God is always there for us in the moments we accept our limitations and even experienced failure, when we realise that left to ourselves we are powerless when it comes to certain struggles. Even the people who are in the public eye and apparently everything seems to go perfect for them, they experience periods of weakness, weariness and despair. I remember reading a book about sports men and women who had won medals in the Olympics and many other accolades, when it was all over for them many of them fell into depression, drug addiction, etc. Pope St. John Paul II commented to a priest at a meeting with youth in Naples: ‘I needed that round of applause.’ Sometimes we are reluctant to admit our human limitations. We want to appear strong at all times – a paternalistic, authoritarian attitude.

The world and media will tell you: It’s not cool to show weakness and fear. Some may even think that such feelings aren’t worthy of someone who has faith in God; but this could not be further from the truth. As we go through life we come up against a lot of negativity. Let’s not listen to this negativity, don’t let negative people rain on our parade. There once was a bunch of tiny frogs, who arranged a running competition. The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower. A big crowd had gathered around the tower to see the race and cheer on the contestants. The race began. No one in crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower. You heard statements such as: “oh, way too difficult!!” “They will never make it to the top” or  “not a chance that they will succeed. The tower is too high!” The tiny frogs began collapsing one by one. The crowd continued to yell, “It is too difficult! No one will make it”. Most of the tiny frogs got tired and gave up. But one continued higher and higher and higher. This one wouldn’t give up! At the end everyone else had given up climbing the tower. Except for the one tiny frog, who, after a big effort, was the only one who reached the top! Then all of the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how this one frog managed to do it. A contestant asked the tiny frog how he had found the strength to succeed and reach the goal. It turned out that the winner was deaf. The moral of this of this story is: Never listen to the negativity of other people because they take your most wonderful dreams and wishes away from you. Always think positively and be positive in your comments to other people. With Gods help we can achieve anything