JESUS FEEDS US AND ASKS US TO FEED ONE ANOTHER

THE LOAVES AND FISH ARE OUR ENCOURAGEMENT

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. When Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist, he withdrew in the boat to a deserted place by himself. The crowds heard of this and followed him on foot from their towns. When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick. When it was evening the disciples approached him and said, This is a deserted place. It is already late. Dismiss the crowds so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves. Jesus said to them, There's no need for them to go away. Give them some food yourselves. But they said to him, Five loaves and two fish are all we have here. Then he said, Bring them to me. And he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, Jesus said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds. They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over twelve wicker baskets full. Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. First show and tell. The vestment I have came from the Holy Land, and I'm wearing the stole outside today. And if you look at the stole image, you see it's the image of today's gospel. The loaves and fish. Okay? And that is a symbol we hold on to very dearly in our church. As a matter of fact, on the blue, the green banner back there, loaves and fish. And if you look around the windows or some of the decor of any Catholic church, you'll see the loaves and the fish. Because it's a reminder of this miracle, but something even more. The even more comes from the first reading. The first reading was from the prophet Isaiah. People of Israel were outside their hometown. They were in exile. Finally, they were coming home. And through the prophet Isaiah, they're told, you're going to be fed. You're going to be fed, you're going to be taken care of. All you who have no money, come receive grain. Without pain, without cost, receive milk and drink. Why spend your money on what is not bread, and your wages on what fail to satisfy? Heed me and come to me. And it goes on. So the scripture is telling the people of Israel, I'm here. This is God, the Creator, Yahweh speaking. I'm here. And I'm here to take care of you and to feed you. And they had no idea what they were in for because they had been in exile, probably limited on what they could eat and drink. So now they're being given a promise through Isaiah to the people of Israel come and I'm going to feed you more than you can imagine. And you're not even going to have to pay for it. This shows God's generosity. And it shows his generosity and gets picked up by his son Jesus, who comes to us with that same concept in mind that he, Jesus, is coming to us to take care of us, to nourish us, to nurture us, to feed us, to give us drink. And what he does in the gospel today is exactly that. Now there are times in which we don't want to do that. We don't want to share of our abundance. And we're reminded that we are Christ's people. We are in Christ. Our challenge is to live in Christ. And as a matter of fact, Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans: nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. Not even your generosity. Nothing. The needs of others, nothing. And then he goes on to give you things that might be tempted to separate us from the love of Christ, death and evil and conquer being conquered and so on. But no, no. With your faith intact, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. And in our own families, our own world, our own nation, there are a lot of things that we are tempted to use to separate ourselves from Christ. And one of them is lack of generosity, being greedy, taking care of only myself. Very unchrist-like thinking. So what does Jesus do tonight in the scripture? He reiterates the Father's gift. They're in a lonely place. He just heard that his cousin John the Baptist was beheaded and he's going off for the lonely place. He was mourning, praying for himself and for John's mission. And while he was there, people heard about it, as the scriptures of Matthew tell us, and they start accumulating and growing around him. They were coming from all the villages. I mean, to the point where Matthew estimates 5,000 plus men, children, and women, who weren't usually counted in official census those days. So, okay, so he's preaching, he's doing what God the Father sent him to do: healing, loving, give an example. And one of the examples that God the Father gave us in Isaiah is eating, being fed by God. So his disciples very logically tell him, Jesus, it's late, there's nobody here, I mean, there's there's no shops here, these people are hungry. Let's dismiss them, tell them to go home, go to the villages, buy food, and go home with a full stomach. And Jesus gets us involved with that. With a simple phrase, give them some food yourselves. Is he talking to the disciples? Yes. And us, imitating the Father who fed Israel in abundance. Now Jesus is right on the cusp of doing something interesting that we know about, feeding the five thousand. But before he feeds them, he tells us give them something yourselves to eat. Now we are not surrounded by five thousand here in our parish or in our homes. We go through ordinary life every day, ups and downs. We hear good things, we hear bad things. And even with that, Jesus is asking us to feed one another. He takes the bread, he takes the fish, and it's able, he's able to feed 5,000 plus. He's showing the generosity of God, the overwhelming generosity, just like the Isaiah prophecy, that God's holy mountain will take care of us. We come here and we receive the greatest gift God ever gave us. And it's bread, the body of his son in the Eucharist, and it's wine, the blood, the cup of salvation. And we're invited by God, Jesus Himself, to come here and be nourished so that we can fulfill His mandate. Go feed them yourselves. Give them something to eat yourselves. Now, some of us, through the charity of the parish or local charities, do literally feed the hungry. And I know it's been a custom here at St. Anthony's to feed the homeless when our kitchen was up and running and it's still to be repaired. But there are many places, churches, parishes, that feed the hungry. So they take this mandatory invitation of Jesus to fulfill his mission. Because from the Father to Jesus, from Jesus to his apostles, from his apostles to us, the mission is the same. Feed them. Now, we know bread, food, hot dogs, hamburgers, all those good things. Feed people. But we're asked to feed people not only food, we're asked to feed people love, forgiveness, understanding. And that sometimes we have to remember, you don't have to go out to the outlands to do this. It's right here. Our own home. Our own parish, yes, but our own home. There are people who are hungry in our own homes, in our own families. Hungry for food, yes, that too. But hungry for attention, hungry for love, hungry for understanding. And the members of our community that are disabled, they're hungry for your view of them, for your respect of them. Our children are hungry for our example as adults in the community. Our children are hungry for good examples. Our children are hungry for right thinking in our society. And it's not going to come out of the air, it's going to come from you and me. It's come from our words and our actions. So we come here tonight to look at Jesus, who gives us the energy and the reason that we have to go out and feed others with love and food. And the reason is that he's one with us. Paul makes it very clear: nothing will separate you from the love of Christ. Nothing. No sword, no hanging, no peril, nothing. Except selfishness. Except greed. Except prejudice. Except hate. They will all separate us from the love of Christ and almost prevent us from feeding one another, from taking care of one another. So as we come before the Lord, we can contemplate on the symbol of the fish and the loaves, but really contemplate on the fullness of that message, who that is in reality in the Eucharist Jesus. He's with us. It's not all up to me, as he told the apostles, go feed them yourselves. It's not all up to Jesus. It's up to us working together as a family of faith, as Catholics, as people who love as Jesus loves. We feed one another as God lovingly feeds us.