Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

I have never starved in my life before and I am presuming that so is the case with most of us in this parish. May be a few examples will help us understand the reality of starvation. In an image I saw on BBC an entire family was eating the rotting flesh of a dead animal in Niger. Or take Amina, a twelve year old girl. She is so starved that she cannot eat food even if she wants to. She vomits as soon as anything goes in. Amina’s mother had this to say at the end of it all. She said, "As far as I'm concerned, God did not make us all equal - I mean, look at us. None of us has enough food." More than 862 million people in the world go hungry. In developing countries nearly 16 million children die every year from hunger related illnesses. In the United States, 11.7 million children live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet. That means that one in ten households in the U.S. are living with hunger or are at risk of hunger. It is in this context that I would like to read this passage from Isaiah:
“All you who are thirsty,
Come to the water!
You who have no money,
Come, receive grainve and eat;
Come without paying and without cost,
Drink wine and milk!” (Is 55: 1-3)

I always wonder that if there were Catholics among the starving and they had to be at today’s mass, what these words would sound like for them. Or take the miracle of the multiplication of loaves (Mt 14:13-21). I wonder if the starving people think why God does not multiply bread and fish for them today. If only a little food could be multiplied…

The situation of the time of Jesus was no different from the poverty and starvation that exits in many parts of the world today. Jesus himself was poor and because of the taxes imposed by the Romans, most peasants of the time of Jesus were poor. Jesus fasted for forty days and so he knew what it meant to be starved. If he wanted he could have changed stones in to bread, but he did not. No wonder then that Jesus was sensitive to the needs of the people who were hungry. So Jesus asks the disciples to give the hungry people bread to eat. There was only one problem. There was not enough for all. Just as in the desert, if Jesus wanted he could have turned stones into bread. But he did not. Rather, he asked his disciples to give them bread. They did and miraculously everybody was fed that day.


I would like to offer three practical implications:

1. The bread and fish for the multiplication came from the disciples who gave the bread that they had perhaps saved for themselves. In another gospel it was a little boy who offered the bread. In the gospels we often find that the human and the divine combined to make a miracle. Very often Jesus would say to the person whom he healed, “Your faith has made you well.” Human faith and God’s power can make miracles. In today’s episode of the multiplication of loaves human bread and God’s power come together to make a miracle. In the world today, God can multiply food, but someone has to give the five loaves and the two fish. How blessed for the person who made the self-sacrifice so that Jesus could multiply the bread and fish. Can we be the ones who in faith can step out in self-sacrifice so that food can be multiplied? What can we offer to Christ today so that there are fewer hungry and starving people in the world? What can we offer to Christ so that no child will die of starvation?

2. In today’s second reading, Paul asks a rhetorical question. He asks, “Brothers and sisters: What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? If we recall Amina’s mother at the beginning of this homily, she said, "As far as I'm concerned, God did not make us all equal - I mean, look at us. None of us has enough food." I am wondering whether hunger pangs of one’s own child can separate a person from God. It is possible for human beings to feel abandoned by God just as Jesus experienced abandonment on the cross. There certainly are times in my life when I have experienced the absence of God. There were three people at the foot of the cross that saw Jesus through and one of them was his mother. Today’s gospel is calling us to stand by each other especially those who feel abandoned by God. We must be the presence of God to them.

3. Third point, the multiplication of the loaves has very strong Eucharistic symbolism. Bread, in the Eucharist, is not merely multiplied; it is transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus. But remember, the bread and wine that will be brought up to the altar is the work of human hands. However, it is the self-sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that will make it possible this bread and wine to be transformed into the body and blood of Jesus. Here, on this altar is where a miracle will take place. But an equally great miracle is in store if we will allow God to transform us and we become bread for the hungry. This week let us take the time to find out someone in need, particularly do some research about the hungry places in the world, and become bread for the world.

In conclusion, let me say that we have a challenge to face. How can we make this Eucharist meaningful for the world? How can we make this Eucharist meaningful for those in need? Bring your bread… make a self-sacrifice. Allow God to multiply food and drink. Please give what you can, not out of your abundance but from what you need to be bread for the world. Amen.

- Fr. Satish Joseph