Twelve Wicker Baskets Full
Pastor’s Column
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 26, 2016
In this Sunday’s gospel (John 6:1-15), Jesus arranges a test for the disciples! We remember that Jesus and the twelve have gone across the Sea of Galilee for a rest, only to find an enormous crowd waiting for them. These people had gone to great lengths to see and hear Jesus, and had arrived at a place with little to offer in the way of food. The disciples are alarmed at how late in the day Jesus was speaking and the lack of resources, but Jesus uses this rather desperate situation to teach the disciples something about the power of God.
In much the same way, life can have a way of offering us challenges that Jesus also wishes to take advantage of in the life of each person, times when life’s demands may exceed our resources. This is a common theme in the gospels, which leads one to believe that it is integral to the human condition that we experience these things in order to grow spiritually.
Jesus in our Scripture today is offered exactly five loaves and two fish, the kind of meal a Jewish traveler would take “on the go” (because it wouldn’t spoil easily), and certainly not enough for the crowd. Yet somehow, when Christ divides this humble offering of food into several baskets and they begin to distribute this to the crowd, the food multiplies and multiplies. The lesson is that God can do anything, and his Divine Providence will provide for what we need in desperate circumstances if we ask him, although his answers are not always on our time scale or what we had in mind! Yet God always makes things right in the end for us if we ask with faith, either in this life or the next. He will never ever fail us.
The people of two thousand years ago sought out Jesus because his teaching was spell-binding and his miracles were incredible, and now they want to make him a king because he could provide unlimited food. Jesus still performs a spell-binding and incredible miracle at every Mass in the Holy Eucharist! If only we could see this Sacrament as it really is; but, like Christ himself, the reality of actually seeing Christ as God in the Eucharist is usually reserved for the world to come. Now, we see him in faith.
Jesus multiplies himself to be present at every altar at Mass, in every tabernacle in the world, so that we might be literally fed with his very Body and Blood and grow in faith as we receive him. The Eucharist is Jesus hidden in the world in a humble form, so that we might approach him with confidence. When we receive the Eucharist or adore in his presence, we are truly in the presence of God, just as these people were 2000 years ago. It is up to us to recognize the opportunity God gives us in the world now, just as these people recognized theirs when they travelled so far, even without adequate food, in order to see and hear Jesus. We have him present in our churches in just the same way, if we could only recognize who it is that is offering his very life to us in the Eucharist.
Father Gary