18th
Ordinary Sunday (Year A)
First
Reading: Isaiah 55:1-3 Second
Reading: Romans 8:35, 37-39 Gospel
Reading: Matthew 14:13-21
“THE
HAND OF THE LORD FEEDS US; HE ANSWERS ALL OUR NEEDS.”
A
story is told of a farmer whose farms were full of corn. Every
morning on waking up, he prayed aloud to God that the needy would
also be supplied with corn. But when anyone in need asked for a
little of his corn, he would always say that he had none to spare.
One
day after hearing his father pray for the poor and the needy, his
little son said to him, “Father, I wish I had your corn.”
“What
would you do with it?” asked the father.
The
child replied, “I would answer your prayer.”
The
farmer had compassion for the needy. He prayed that their needs be
supplied. But his compassion was without corresponding action. It
took his son to point out the in-congruence of his situation and thus
his prayer.
Today
is the 18th
Sunday in Ordinary Time. In
one way or another, all of today’s Scripture Readings emphasize the
provident goodness of God, who feeds all of creation and satisfies
the desire of every living creature. In the First Reading from the
Book of the Prophet Isaiah, Isaiah utters words of consolation to the
people in exile. We hear the
voice of a hospitable God who invites all to a sumptuous banquet
where the hungry, the thirsty and the poor could feast freely and
richly. It is an offer of abundant life as well as a call to listen
to His word. The love of a nurturing God made manifest in Jesus
Christ is strongly underlined in today’s Second Reading from St.
Paul's Letter to the Romans. St. Paul avows that nothing can separate
us from the love of Christ. Indeed, we conquer overwhelmingly all
trials and difficulties through him who loves us. We are consoled
that God is our support and strength. In the Gospel Reading from St.
Matthew, Jesus miraculously feeds five thousand people in a deserted
place with five loaves and two fish. He shows his great concern
towards people who had left everything and stayed
with him to listen to his word. “The hand
of the Lord feeds us; He answers all our needs.”
Now,
the most prominent characteristic of Jesus which stands out clearly
in the Gospels is his compassion. He is always compassionate to the
poor & the weak, to the sick & the suffering, to the sinners
& the outcasts, to the hungry & the thirsty. Today's Gospel
Reading, which speaks about the miraculous feeding of the five
thousand, is a good example of this - Jesus is moved with pity for
the crowd who followed him on foot from their towns to listen to him
and who are tired & exhausted, hungry & thirsty.
On
its own, the miraculous feeding of the five thousand is a marvelous
account of one of the greatest and most attested to miracles, as it
is recorded in all the four Gospels, and astonishingly twice in the
Gospels of Mark and Matthew. Certainly, each version is shaped in
slightly different way according to the particular concerns of the
Evangelist. We don't generally find six accounts of nothing! If one
is looking for the historical evidence for a multiplication of
loaves, then six accounts of it in the pages of the New Testament
surely ought to be enough to satisfy him/her. Of course, different
approaches are often taken in relation to these miracles to
interpret them. But to put them in context is to open up a whole new
layers of meaning and depth.
Today,
we have the account of the event from Ch 14 of St. Matthew, but there
is another account of what is essentially the same miracle in Ch 15.
In today's version there are five thousand men with five loaves and
two fish and in Ch 15 we find four thousand men with seven loaves and
few fish. Considering today's reading in St. Matthew's context we
find that Ch 14 begins with his account of the banquet at which John
the Baptist was executed. This was an old-style royal banquet of the
worst kind. Herod is there with his cronies enjoying the best food
and drink his kingdom has to offer. There is debauchery, arrogance,
rivalry and scheming; and the upshot of all this is that the head of
John the Baptist is triumphantly brought in on a plate.
This
paragraph ends and the next one opens with our text of today and has
Jesus going to a lonely place. But finding himself followed by the
throngs of people, he takes pity on them and feeds them in a
miraculous meal drawn from five loaves and two fish. All are
satisfied; they are fed both physically and spiritually and there was
an astonishing amount left over. “The hand
of the Lord feeds us; He answers all our needs.”
What
a difference! St. Matthew sets these two banquets beside each other
precisely in order to make this contrast between a banquet offered by
a worldly, brutal & selfish king and the banquet of a loving &
generous Savior to which the poor are invited. He is deliberately
making a direct contrast between the values of this world and the
values of the Kingdom of Heaven. Herod's squalid banquet does nothing
for anyone, least of all Herod who comes out of it with a guilty
conscience. All who participate in that banquet come out the worse
for it; except perhaps the one reluctant guest, John the Baptist. For
him it meant the crown of martyrdom. It meant the fulfillment of his
role. He died knowing that he had completed his task and paved the
way for the Savior of the world.
But
this is not only context in which this wonderful miracle is set. If
we look back into the Old Testament, we find the great prophet Elisha
performing very similar thing in the 2nd Book of the
Kings. He has only twenty barley loaves, but he satisfies the hunger
of one hundred men. “The hand of the Lord
feeds us; He answers all our needs.”
That's
looking back into the pages of the OT, but we must also look forward
to the Last Supper to which the Feeding of the Five Thousand also
alludes. There are clear Eucharistic references in the text – such
as Jesus taking the bread, raising his eyes to heaven, blessing it,
breaking it and giving it to them. So, St. Matthew is telling his
audience something about their own Eucharist. This miracle is clearly
therefore a foreshadowing of the Last Supper. The abundance of the
twelve baskets of leftovers represents the twelve tribes of the New
Israel, presided over by the twelve disciples.
The
bounty of God, the great outpouring of his love, the constant
nourishment that he gives us is not restricted to that lonely place
by the Sea of Galilee or within that Upper Room in Jerusalem. It
reaches out to us now in the sacrament we celebrate this morning and
connects us to him in an unbreakable bond of love. That's why St.
Paul very loudly and clearly says in the 2nd
Reading from his Letter to the Romans - “Brothers and sisters:
What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or peril, or the sword? No, in
all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Again,
while reflecting on the Feeding of the Five Thousand we look back to
the time of Elisha and we look forward to the Last Supper and find
definite resonance. But it goes still beyond this, for as with
everything Christ does, it refers also to the Kingdom of Heaven,
which will come into its fulness at the end of time. Jesus also
compared the Kingdom of Heaven to a wedding banquet - “
The Kingdom of God may be likened to a king who gave a wedding feast
…,” for which all are invited. This is also what we
hear in the 1st Reading of today, taken
from prophet Isaiah, where God is inviting all who are
hungry and thirsty to eat and drink free of cost, even him who has no
money. This is God's invitation to each one of us to His heavenly
banquet. A sumptuous banquet is offered by Him - wine and milk and
bread, all without cost. Here, the imagery is lavish in the extreme.
“The hand of the Lord feeds us; He answers
all our needs.”
In
conclusion: Just as Elisha's miracle foreshadows Jesus' miracle
in Galilee, which in turn foreshadows the Last Supper, the Eucharist
we now celebrate, which again in turn foreshadows the Banquet of
Heaven; actually not foreshadows it, but already enables us to begin
participate in it. Now, partaking in the Lord’s Supper nourishes
the spiritual life of the believer. Much as ordinary or material food
strengthens and helps our bodies to grow, Eucharist promotes the
spiritual growth begun in us at baptism. Just as we cannot hope to
survive without material food, the Eucharist is necessary for our
growth in the life of faith. We can see now something that can only
be described as a great crescendo building up over the centuries
which will come to its fulfillment on the Last Day. And this
breathtaking crescendo is a tremendous up-swell of goodness, beauty,
generosity and self-sacrifice. It is a wave of love that wants to
catch up all of humanity and bring it to its fulfillment in God. That
simple meal on the side of the lake did not simply fill the bellies
of those five thousand people; it was a sign of the Kingdom of
Heaven. It was a token of God's great concern and magnanimous love
for us. It was a pledge of his promise to open for us the way to
eternal life. “The
hand of the Lord feeds us; He answers all our needs.”
And this is the Good News of today.
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