17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, B July 27, 2024
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
This is the first in a series, the next homily continues here.
Whatever did or did not happen at the opening show of the Olympics, whatever was or was not intended by its designers, one thing is certain: we all need Jesus Christ. More than that, all human beings hunger for him, though we so often fail to realize that. Complicating things still further, we often try to satisfy that hunger with a substitute version of him. If indeed we did witness blasphemy on an international scale on Friday, this lens of mistaken identity is perhaps the best one to view it through. After all, we see a similar dynamic in the gospel.
At first, the people came to Jesus because they want to be healed of their illnesses, to be freed. But notice the way today’s gospel describes it: “they saw the signs he was performing on the sick.” Not “miracles” or “healing,” but “signs.” Jesus really did do miracles, but they were pointing to something more, signs of a deeper reality.
This is important because of what we’ll read about over the next 4 Sundays: the Bread of Life discourse where Jesus speaks of his body and blood as food and drink. These people today came to him because they were “hungry” for miracles, but what they receive are “signs.” Beneath that curiosity and desire for healing, Jesus sees their natural hunger for food. So Jesus feeds their bodies with fish and bread.
Jesus acknowledges our desires: curiosity, desire for health, hunger for food and drink. He provides for us, but he always invites us to something more. It’s why he gives this rather cryptic test to his apostles: “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” He knows they don’t have money for that. Jesus is trying to point out the fact that we cannot satisfy our desires on our own. No matter how much we eat, we’ll be hungry again. We can make ourselves comfortable for a time, but eventually any chair, any bed won’t be enough and we’ll need to move.
This design is on purpose. Jesus isn’t just calling attention to just this one moment of limitation, but to all limitations. The Apostles don’t get it. They almost laugh to themselves even as they suggest the 5 loaves and 2 fish. Then Jesus springs the trap. You’re still thinking like human beings! Let me show you what God has in store. 5000 people fed… and then the leftovers are nearly 12 times what they started with! Those numbers are intentional, of course. Another nudge that this is a sign of something more. It’s Jesus’ way of saying “I can more than satisfy your every desire!”
They don’t get it. All they know is that they wanted healing and they got it. They wanted food and they got it. Now they want a king, so why shouldn’t Jesus satisfy that desire too? Not this time. That’s one desire they aren’t ready to have fulfilled, despite what they think they want. So Jesus flees.
Do you think that’s it? That the signs end there? Of course not. Even his absence is intentional. He knows they will follow him. He knows they will be hungry again… that they are already hungry in ways they don’t yet recognize. He’s setting them up to learn. And when they come to him again with their hunger, some of them at least will be ready to feast on the only thing that truly satisfies.
But reflect again on how they get to that point. Jesus could just jump to the end, reveal his divinity, give us the Eucharist, forgive our sins, and then ascend into heaven in all his glory. But he doesn’t. He lets us feel that hunger. He waits until we come to him with that hunger. And even as he tells us “no,” he prepares us to receive the even greater “yes.”
Are you hungry? I’m sure some of you are looking forward to dinner after Mass, but that’s not the hunger I’m talking about. Are you hungry for meaning? For acceptance? Love? Do you hunger for excellence or success? To have a mission? How many of you feel let down… beaten down by life… perhaps even abandoned by God? How often do we finally get what we want… only to find that it doesn’t last?
Why God do I have this desire for that woman… that man if I cannot have them? Why do you put this desire to make beautiful things in my heart, but gave me hands incapable of making them? Why Lord do you call me holiness but let me fall so often? Why make this world so unsatisfactory?
So that we’d never rest in the wrong thing. Original Sin made this much harder, but even Adam and Eve would not have been perfectly happy with just the garden. It was God in the garden that satisfied. Yet… it was God who gave us the garden. It is Jesus who multiplies loaves to feed a physical hunger. It is God who gives us this world… fallen, but still beautiful and full of so many desirable things. It is part of his design that we desire, pursue, and enjoy such things.
That pattern isn’t the problem. The problem is that we forget why he made the world that way. This exercise of desire prepares us to rise higher and higher, to seek God and find him. Only, we get stuck in the lesson, the sign. It’s like finding a sign saying, “free crawfish this way,” and then stopping at the sign to take pictures and celebrate, but then never going on to the actual destination.
Those who mock God do so because they see him as the one who denies their desires. Those who turn away from God do so because they cannot see that the good things of this world aren’t actually the fulfillment they’re really looking for. So, even as we rightly call out their sins and errors for what they are, we must have compassion for those who see Jesus only as someone trying to deprive them of love.
And what of ourselves? We should see the signs and follow them all the way to Jesus. Whatever it is you desire, go to Jesus! Like the crowd who were hungry but did not realize it because they were focused on the miracles, go to Jesus. Bring him your every desire. Sometimes, he will give it to you. Sometimes, however, often, actually, he will satisfy it only partially or not at all. Instead, he’ll speak to the desire hidden beneath the surface, to the original desire that’s been twisted to seem like something else entirely. It might mean going hungry for a time, bearing your illnesses a bit longer, enduring the dissatisfaction of this world until the deepest hunger can surface long enough to recognize that what Christ offers is the only thing that satisfies forever: himself.
The next homily continues here.
Thanks so much for your homily.