Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we begin hearing about Elijah. He appears suddenly on the scene in the first book of Kings, and this sort of makes sense that he appears suddenly because there was an urgent need for him. The king of Israel, that is the king of the northern ten tribes, which he separated from the southern two, was a serious problem. When the Bible introduces this king it says, Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him. It continues, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel the daughter of Ithobaal, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him. Jeroboam was the one who had set up two golden calves to worship so that the ten tribes wouldn't go to the temple of Jerusalem. So he introduced idolatry for political motives, not out of conviction but out of a desire to keep his subjects from returning to union with the son of David. Those idols weren't enough for Ahab. He introduced the cult of other false gods, and this chiefly because of his marriage to Jezebel. Her father was Ithobaal. 
He had been a priest of the fertility goddess in Sidon. Then he killed the king of Sidon and took over. He had a long reign which was successful from a worldly point of view. He also ruled over Tyre and surrounding areas. Jezebel probably learned from him that sometimes you just have to kill some people to get things done. A very different sort of spirituality or a very different worldview than that we see in today's gospel and the Beatitudes. Her name was not exactly Jezebel. Her original name was something glorifying Baal, but Jews reading the Bible aloud didn't want to say that. So they noticed that if they pronounced her name with vowels, it meant islands of dung or no dung. They were much happier talking about dung than about a false god. Their main concern was to avoid glorifying this false god, but disrespecting this idolatrous and murderous woman was an added bonus. Like Ithobaal, Ahab and his father Omri were very successful in terms of material prosperity, military strength, and international influence. Ahab reigned from about 875 to 854 BC, a 22-year reign, so a pretty good run.
Marrying Jezebel, a Phoenician princess, cemented Ahab's alliance with Sidon. Building a temple to Baal and a sacred pole for the fertility goddess pleased his wife and served the purposes of the alliance. He was showing that he worshipped the same god as his ally. He got the aid of Phoenician architects and craftsmen to help him complete the new capital his father had begun, just as Solomon had once gotten Phoenician craftsmen to help him work on his projects. In fact, the building projects of Ahab and his father Omri were perhaps even more extensive, perhaps even surpassed those of Solomon. So from a worldly point of view, this was a successful period, political stability, wealth, greater power for Israel, greater international influence, but God was greatly angered at this further spread of idolatry. So he raised up Elijah, a mighty prophet to oppose a mighty king, or better to oppose the evil that king was doing.
God would certainly have preferred to get Ahab to repent, and at one point the king did show a little repentance. The prophet's very name is part of his message. Elijah means the Lord is my God. My God is not Baal, is not a golden calf, but my God is the Lord. God sent him to impose a carefully chosen chastisement. Elijah said to Ahab, as the Lord, the God of Israel lives, whom I serve, during these years there shall be no dew or rain except at my word. Why a drought? Because Baal was the storm God. The Canaanites invoked him to ask for rain, to ask for the rain that they needed for agriculture. So the Lord was saying, well, so you want to worship Baal instead of me? Let's see if he can give you rain. If he can't, come back to the true God and ask for rain.
Once the Lord's message was delivered, Elijah quickly got out of town. It was God himself who told him to leave and go hide in a wadi east of the Jordan. Gilead, east of the Jordan, is a mountainous region and not too far south, so he gets a fair amount of rainfall, typically 12 to 20 inches a year. So if the wadi Cherith was in that region, it would have made sense for flowing water to remain available there longer than in many other places. Ravens brought food to Elijah every morning and evening.
Over the centuries, people have wondered, where did that food come from? Where did the ravens get it? We can only speculate, and many answers have been proposed, but one good answer is that it came from Ahab's palace. As the king, he would always have been able to get what he needed, even during a famine, so no innocent people would go hungry if the ravens took food from there. Furthermore, scripture tells us that there were 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah, the fertility goddess, who ate at Jezebel's table. If any prophet ought to be fed from the royal table, it should be a prophet of the Lord. So how appropriate it would be for ravens to go and take food meant for the prophets of false gods and give it to the prophet of the true God? Ravens sent, of course, by the true God. One thing we can surely say about the ravens is that they show that God takes care of his faithful servants, using even extraordinary means when necessary, but still with an economy of means. 
So God could have created food out of nothing, but he didn't need to create food out of nothing, because our help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Since everything is at his disposition, everything belongs to him, he can simply bring some food that's available elsewhere to his prophet. So God has everything at his disposal. Those who serve the Lord need fear no evil, and therefore blessed are the poor in spirit. 
The poor are obviously those who possess little or nothing, and the poor in spirit are those who are in their spirit possessive about little or nothing, whether they materially own much or little. It's easier to not cling to possessions if you don't have them, but wealthy saints like Louis IX show that it's possible, if difficult, to have much and not be possessive about what you own. Wealthy people who are poor in spirit use their possessions for the common good, seeing themselves as stewards of God's gifts. God gave them these things not for their own gratification, but so that they can do good. And so they, by using their possessions to help not only themselves, but others, they show themselves good stewards of the gifts of God, and indeed poor in spirit. 
Because Elijah lived by providence, he dedicated his life to serving God, and also doesn't seem to have been married, which is something unusual for an Israelite. He is seen as a model for religious life. In fact, if he was married, why don't we see him doing anything to take care of his family during the famine? Why do we always find him alone or accompanied only by a servant or by a wife or children? So, St. Ambrose considers him to be a virgin, and St. Jerome and St. John Cassian see him as a model for religious life. Then, of course, later the Carmelites see Elijah as, as it were, the first Carmelite, or the founder of their religious order. 
So, in today's readings and in what we'll hear in the future, we see a contrast between, on the one hand, Ahab and Jezebel, who are great in the eyes of the world, and on the other, Elijah, who is great in the eyes of God. The lives of the royal couple will end violently, while Elijah, on the other hand, will be carried up to heaven in a fiery chariot. And this should tell you which of the two you ought to imitate. 
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.