Homily:
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
Friends, after three weeks of
encountering Jesus as “teacher”, in which we listened anew to his many parables
about the kingdom of heaven—its different features and those who will be
included in it—we come this week and encounter Jesus as a “wonder worker”, as
we read again this very familiar report of what we commonly know as both the
“feeding of the five thousand” and the “multiplication of the loaves and the
fish”. Familiar as it is, there is a
richness of meaning in it and, thus, many different lessons to be taken from
it: particularly lessons about God and his great love for us. I cannot possibly discuss them all in one
homily, so I’m going to focus on just one aspect today to try to help draw a
lesson that can speak to us in our current reality.
Perhaps an overarching
reminder in today’s reading is this: Jesus always gathers together, while the
enemy always disperses. Let’s take a
look at the reading to see how this plays out.
At the beginning of the reading, we are told that, when Jesus hears of
the death of John the Baptist—his cousin and friend—he is saddened and so
decides to find a place away from everyone so that he can mourn the loss of his
relative and friend. The reading says
that he “withdrew... by himself”, meaning, perhaps, that he didn’t take his
disciples with him. Thus, when the
crowds came looking for him, they probably pressed his disciples to tell them
where he was going. The disciples,
seeing how desperate these people were to see him, to be taught by him, and to
seek healing from him, gave in and told them where he was going so that they
all ran to that place to meet him when he disembarked.
When he saw the vast crowds
there—that is, in the place where he had hoped to go to be alone for a day or
two to mourn the loss of a close relative and friend—Jesus would have been
justified in saying, “Please go home and leave me here by myself so that I may
mourn in peace.” His heart, however, was
“moved with pity for them” and he ministered to them: curing their sick and
teaching them. In other words, he did
not disperse them—dividing them out back to their own homes—but rather drew
them in, keeping them together.
As evening drew near, Jesus’
disciples—who certainly also pitied the crowd who were so desperate to see
Jesus—began to think, “Okay, this is enough.
Jesus still needs to be alone to mourn.
Besides, there’s no food here and the people are surely hungry. It’s time for everyone to go home.” So, they try to convince Jesus to disperse
the crowd. This, of course, was a very
rational way of thinking that acknowledged our human needs and limitations; but
remember that Jesus came not to show us how to be the “most clever humans ever”,
but rather to teach us how to think with God again: cooperating with him to
bring about a greater human flourishing than could ever be possible for us
alone.
Thus, Jesus refuses their
urging to disperse the crowd; not because he denied that they would be hungry,
but rather because he had one more lesson to teach them (a lesson prophesied by
the prophet Isaiah), who said: “Why spend your money for what is not bread;
your wages for what fails to satisfy? Heed me, and you shall eat well, you
shall delight in rich fare.” The crowd
had “heeded him” all day and now, instead of dispersing them to “spend their
wages on what would fail to satisfy”, he would keep them gathered so that they
could “delight in rich fare”. Although
the disciples did not have the spiritual vision to understand what Jesus was
going to do, they were nonetheless obedient: bringing Jesus what they had and
remaining ready to do his will. Because
of their obedience (that is, because of their willingness to cooperate with the
will of Jesus), Jesus worked a miracle and, in doing so, fulfilled Isaiah’s
prophecy completely when all who were there “ate and were satisfied”.
Friends, the challenge of the
Christian life is to be a unifier, not a separator. There are many ways for us to live this out,
of course, but Jesus shows us that one of the most fundamental ways that we do
this is by allowing our hearts to be moved with pity for those less-fortunate
than us. When we allow this to happen, we
allow others to draw near to us instead of keeping them separated from us: for
allowing our hearts to be moved with pity means that we’ve allowed them into
our hearts, which is the closest place that anyone can be to another person.
This work of being a unifier
does not end with feeling pity for the less-fortunate, but rather continues
with concrete action to relieve the need that the less-fortunate are suffering. As Saint James wrote in his letter: “If one
of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not
give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?” Rather, like Jesus, once we allow them into
our heart, we must act to relieve their need: minimally by refusing to disperse
them by sending them away. That minimum
act of standing with someone in their need is a powerful act of solidarity that
can further our work of being unifiers, instead of separators. The thing is that, from this solidarity comes
a greater unity in giving thanks to One who provides for us all. When Jesus prevented the disciples from
dispersing the crowd and then fed them with the miraculous bread, they all
remained together and gave thanks and praise to the One through whom this
blessing flowed. If you can’t see in
this an allusion to the Mass—that is, the Eucharist—then I’m not sure if
you’re really paying attention.
Perhaps, an example: Yesterday
afternoon, a call came in through the parish’s emergency line. Typically, that is used when someone has
become seriously ill or is dying and needs a priest to come to provide the
sacrament of anointing or last rites.
Sometimes, however, someone who is in financial need will use that
looking for help. Yesterday’s call was
one of these. A young man and his mother
were in Chicago ready to board a train to Lafayette and, when they arrived
here, they said that would have no place to stay for the night. They wanted to know if we could help put them
up in a motel for the night and, if we couldn’t, if we knew of anyone who
could. Having taken the call, I knew
that, at 6:00 pm on a Saturday, I wasn’t going to find much emergency help and
I had to decide, in that moment, whether I was going to take concrete action to
relieve their need. With little of my
own resources at hand—most especially time—I did not heed that call and prayed
that they would find help elsewhere.
I share this example not to
denigrate myself or to seek pity from anyone for the difficult situation that I
was in, but rather to illustrate that this work of being unifiers and not
separators is hard work, requiring us to allow others to intrude into our lives
and disrupt our plans for their good.
Like Jesus’ first disciples, our natural understanding of human needs
and our limitations will mean that, very often, we will encounter someone with
a need and think, “I can’t help you”. In
those moments, the hard work is to hear Jesus saying to us, “There is no need
for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.” Like Jesus’ first disciples, perhaps we won’t
have the spiritual vision to see what the Lord is going to do; but if we
nonetheless obey, Jesus will take whatever we offer him to perform a miracle to
satisfy their need.
My friends, if we can only
move from “I can’t help you” to “I tried to help and failed miserably”, that’s
progress! Because, as I said, even if
the only thing that we can do is stand there with them in their need, well,
we’ve grown in solidarity, which is a great unifier in itself. In doing so, we move from a human way of
thinking in the world, to begin “thinking with God” again and, thus, to a
greater cooperation with him and his will so that his kingdom might grow among
us.
My brothers and sisters, it
should be clear to all of us that the “prince of this world” is a separator,
not a unifier. Human beings, who should
be standing side by side recognizing both our common humanity and our common
end—both in greater society and within the Church—are rather standing opposed
to each other: divided by accidental differences instead of unified by what is
common. The enemy—the great
divider—works unceasingly in this world to perpetuate this illusion: that the
basic situation in this world is that it is “us or them”, when in reality the
situation is always that it is “us with them” and, therefore, that our basic
attitude towards acting in the world must be that it is “us for them”. This pandemic is both highlighting and
exacerbating this point: “Stay away from me, because you might be toxic to
me.” In this sense, those with a
spiritual vision of the world can see that there is a diabolic aspect to this
pandemic.
Let us not forget, however,
what Saint Paul wrote to the Romans nearly two thousand years ago: “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.” Let us strive, therefore, to do
the hard work of being unifiers at every moment of every day—to live as if in
this world it is “us with them” and, therefore, “us for them”—so that Jesus’
work to gather all people to himself will continue among us and more and more
men and women will be united with us to give thanks to the One who provides for
all: the perfect act of thanksgiving that we offer here in this Eucharist.
Given at Saint Mary Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – August 2nd,
2020
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