17th Sunday OT, Year B
Deacon Albert
St. John the Evangelist Cathedral
“God… is over all and through all and in all.” Do we truly believe that? I mean, it is easy to say “yes, God is over all” when you watch a man multiply food and give you more than you can eat – when you lie back on the grass on a sunny day with a full stomach. It’s not hard to profess your faith that God is “in all” when we are surrounded by friends, family, and peace. Yet, do we profess these things when we are hungry? Is our trust in God still there when fear and chaos break into our world? Honestly, where was God in the shooting Thursday?
Thanks be to God, many in our community are able to answer that last question. They know that God brings good out of evil and can recognize our crucified Lord in those who have responded to the tragedy with prayer and support. Yet, there are always some who claim that its just other people helping and has nothing to do with God. How do we respond? “God… is over all and through all and in all.” This means all people as well. Every person is created in his image and God can work through others – actually He seems to prefer to include others in his work. Elisha and Jesus both use bread that someone else gave them in order to feed a large crowd. Jesus is God, he could have made food simply appear or even miraculously empowered the crowd to not need food, but he didn’t; he worked through others – God has called every one of us to a life of holiness, to a life of living out God’s own love.
Jesus Christ, the God-Man and the source of all grace, worked a miracle in response to a very real need for food. In response to Thursday’s horror and many others, Christ greatly desires to work more miracles through his body, through us. Just as with the multiplication of the loaves, he looks at the crowd and then turns to us who claim to be his disciples and asks us to do something about it. What will you do? Some have cried out about wasted life and lost potential. Others clamor for justice and preventing this in the future. There are prayer vigils, donations, and personal visits. All of this is very good, but how long before the crowd becomes hungry again? What about the hundreds of other lives lost every day to violence and neglect without any attention from the media?
When Christ recognizes the hunger of the crowd, he already knows what he will do and he already knows how they will respond – they will try to make him king, but he will reject this. Jesus knows that no political system will give these people what they really need. They want full stomachs and think it would be great to have a king who can give them this – but he wants to fill them with something much more lasting: himself. Christ’s love is shown through the food just as it is shown in the good deeds of other people, but they only seem to remember the food.
A merely political response will not satisfy the real hunger in our world, it will not be loving enough, human enough. Political leaders do have a responsibility to enact good policies, but they should know that they aren’t the answer. Jesus didn’t form a policy or program to feed these people, he used a little boy with some bread. The response is personal. Notice that Jesus himself “took the loaves… and distributed them.” He didn’t vote and he didn’t mail off a check to someone else to do it. Christ acts as he does because he recognizes much more than physical hunger in the people he sees. He knows that “God… is over all and through all and in all.” He sees the God-given human dignity of each and every person. Every. Single. Person.
It is this totality that causes Jesus to say “Gather the fragments left over so that nothing will be wasted.” He says this now to you. The root of this tragedy, and a thousand others, is that our culture no longer recognizes the dignity of the human person. Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict all recognized it, and Pope Francis focuses on this often in his latest encyclical – we live in a throwaway culture. Our world is obsessed with how much you can produce, how much you can contribute – everything else… and everyone else… is cast out, torn apart, disposed of, and sometimes even sold. Without a solid anchor, without recognizing God’s image in every person, men forget what they really are. Before long, those who have been broken… fragmented by our culture can no longer see their dignity or the dignity of others – and some of them remind us of this when they senselessly destroy their own lives and the lives of others.
How many of these fragmented individuals do we create? Is it possible that some act of love and dignity long ago might have kept John Houser from coming to this? Is there a way to gather up others before it’s too late so that no more life goes to waste?… There is; by recognizing the dignity of each and every person we encounter, especially the fragmented ones. By living “in a manner worthy of the call you have received” in Baptism. What does this mean for you on a practical and personal level? I suggest two things: renewed devotion to the Eucharist, and reaching out to those on the fringes of society.
The miracle in the Gospel is the beginning of what is called the “Bread of Life Discourse,” which ends with Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist. Our faith tells us that that little round wafer is no longer bread, but is actually Jesus’ body, blood, soul and divinity; and it is completely helpless. If we are sincere in our faith, we recognize this and treat the Eucharist very carefully, very reverently. This trains us to see an invisible dignity. Mother Teresa went to mass at 4:30 in the morning every day and prayed daily in the presence of the Eucharist – she said that she learned to see Christ in the poor by recognizing Christ in the Eucharist. So, look seriously at how you treat the Eucharist and renew your devotion to it. Work to remove any obstacles or sins which keep you away from receiving and then do so reverently. Ask Christ to help you recognize him in the least among us and to feed them… with bread and love.
Backed by faith and grace in the Eucharist, reach out to acknowledge the dignity of those hardest to love. Start with people who are hard to get along with in your life and strive to reach out to the fringes of society. A kind word, a smile, and a simple acknowledgement goes a long way to remind the homeless and the outcasts that they are human beings. Do you know about Catholic Services of Acadiana just down the street from us? They are an entire block dedicated to serving the poor and homeless. They house hundreds and feed thousands. They usually need volunteers and can always use more money, but more than that… they need the Church, you and me as individuals, to simply be present to the people fragmented off of our community. Our beautiful community, so quick to rally after Mickey Shunick, so fervent in response to this new tragedy, nonetheless has more than its fair share of people who have been broken off, people in danger of forgetting their dignity and of going to waste. God wants to love them through you. There are many ways to help, but each of us should do something.
As one way of encouraging us to love the poor and the outcast in the way Christ does, I am going to offer a series I call “Love in Action.” We will study holy men and women who are real examples of Christ’s love for others. More than learning about how to love, it will provide an opportunity to act on that love by including those on the fringes of society in our prayer and study. It will be held in St. Joseph Diner on Tuesdays at 6:30 PM, the closest thing to a home that many of our poor have. We will begin in mid-August with a look at Mother Teresa. More details will be given in the bulletin and announcements in upcoming weekends.
So, whatever you do, this program or something else, make this awakening an opportunity for conversion and lasting change. Give your time, your bread into the hands of Christ. Let him take it, break it, multiply it, and use it to feed the real hunger in our culture, to remind man that God is indeed over all and through all and in all. Amen.