He was telling me that one of his earliest childhood memories is of the local parish priest often coming around and visiting the family. His recollection is of the priest sitting up in the kitchen with his feet in the oven or I suppose on the edge of the oven, warming himself in the days before there was central heating and that sort of familiarity, the priest as part of the local furniture, is really useful for Catholic living. Jesus was separated from the apostles because he went off to pray and he sent them to cross the lake. This exemplifies or focuses our attention on the relationship between God and nature. It is a useful focus for our thoughts today, where as more people drift away from Christianity, a number of them are tending almost to worship nature.
Nature is very beautiful but sometimes very fierce, very imperfect.
He saved Judaism at that time from the pagans when they were tempted to leave the worship of the One True God and go chasing after other things. He is a useful saint for our age today and you remember there was that tremendous contest between the prophets of Baal and Elijah, where they tried to get the fire to come down and to consume the offerings of the cattle. The prophets of Baal were unable to do it, Elijah put water on the cattle and eventually the flame came down and burnt up the sacrifice as a vindication of the One True God. We are told that he and presumably with the help of others, we can't be sure of the figures, went off and slaughtered all the priests of Baal. So it wasn't a very ecumenical age.