17th Sunday of Ordinary Times

Were you ever in a situation where there was not enough food to go around? It may have been a family situation or a social function. What was your attitude? or, How did you deal with the situation?

Today's readings recall God’s infinite power of two extraordinary acts of feeding hungry crowds, one by Elisha and one by Jesus. In the first reading, Elisha places twenty loaves of barley bread before 100 people and manages to feed them all. More remarkable still is the presence of leftovers. And, In the Gospel, Jesus finds Himself, the Apostles, and a large crowd of people in a situation of food shortage. The only food they had among them was five barley loaves and two fish. Yet, with five barley loaves and a few fish, Jesus feeds over 5,000 people, He miraculously fed them and still has twelve baskets of leftovers. Both readings urge us to take extraordinary actions to meet an urgent need, especially the needs of desperate people in our midst.

St. John tells this story in a way that reflects the Eucharist. Jesus wants to feed us with the bread of life, eternal life. St. John's Gospel refers to this miracle of feeding the multitude as a “sign”. Like any sign it points to something else. The abundance of bread which nourishes the five thousand is both a sign of the abundance of life in the Eucharist and a call to us as a Eucharistic people to feed the hungry. We might be the exact answer to someone else’s prayers when we reach out. When God chooses to us we can do great things; just as, with Jesus’ help, the little food the boy in the Gospel offered was enough to feed a multitude of people. The 12th century Jewish philosophers, Maimonides noted that one of the highest levels of generosity is attained when one gives to those who do not even know the giver. The great saint of charity, St. Vincent de Paul, wrote to a friend in 1648, “We cannot better assure our eternal happiness that by living and dying in the service of the poor, in the arms of providence, and with genuine renouncement of ourselves in order to follow Christ.” And, He told his closest collaborator, Louise de Marillac: “ In the name of God, let us not be surprised at anything. God will do everything for the best.”