Reading 1
Is 55:1-3
Thus says the LORD:
All you who are thirsty,
come to the water!
You who have no money,
come, receive grain and eat;
Come, without paying and without cost,
drink wine and milk!
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.
Come to me heedfully,
listen, that you may have life.
I will renew with you the everlasting covenant,
the benefits assured to David.
The Desert
God wants to remind us that we are seeking things which “fail to satisfy” rather than coming to him. God insists that we come to him so that we “may have life”. How is that we are seeking things that fail to satisfy? Let’s look at Exodus chapter 16 where the Israelites are stuck in the desert without food. In this chapter, the Israelites grumble against Moses and Aaron. Some complained that if they had stayed in Egypt, at least they would have died with food in their bellies. In response, God gave them manna, which was a mysterious bread that appeared out of nowhere. He proposed a very good deal- he would give them food every day as long as they would not store any food up overnight. It was a very fair deal to the Israelites.
Can you imagine if McDonald’s announced that they would give free food to anyone who wanted it as long as they didn’t store it over night? That’s a pretty good deal. But the Israelites did not listen to Moses. Some of them kept the food over night and it became spoiled and full of worms. God also commanded the people, to take 2 days worth of the manna on the 6th day and that on this day it was okay to store it up over night. God promised that on the 6th day, the manna would not spoil over night. It remained fresh just as promised. The 7th day was meant for rest and the Israelites were told not to go out to gather the manna because there would be none on the 7th day. Yet once again, the Israelites disobeyed God and went out to look for the food. They found none.
Those crazy Israelites look kind of dumb don’t they? God parted the Red Sea and saved them from Pharaoh’s army. He fed them food from Heaven in a miraculous way. Yet they would not listen to God’s promises nor have faith that God would provide for them. God promised to feed them just enough each day, yet each night they would try to store up the food. The bible is full of stories like this where God gives simple instructions which are inevitably disobeyed. The result is usually some sort of tragedy. The first of these instances is in the garden of Eden. But these stories are not meaningless, distant tales of long ago. WE are the modern day Israelites. We are the modern day Adams and Eves. Was God’s word in the first reading meant just to be read 2500 years ago? No! God is speaking these words to us now! “Heed me and you shall eat well!”
Storing Manna Overnight in 2008
In Matthew 6:25-34 (a passage certainly meant for us Christians) God promises that he will provide for all of our needs. Do we listen or do we behave like the Israelites trying to store up food that doesn't last? Do we "come to God heedfully" as described in the 1st reading, or do we "spend our wages on things which fail to satisfy"? Sadly, most of us are not listening to Jesus' suggestion that we be dependent on him for EVERYTHING and that he will give us EVERYTHING that we need. Like the Israelites, who disobeyed by storing the manna over night and looked for food on the Sabbath, we Americans are also obsessed with survival. We show our obsession with material things by consuming HALF of the world's wealth. 1 out of 20 people in the world is American, yet we consume half of everything! We consume and store up not just food, but EVERYTHING for ourselves! Can you imagine living in a college dorm where one of the tenants uses half of the food, water, and electricity? That would be absurd! Yet despite the incredible surplus the Lord has given us, we can't get enough. We work on Sundays as we go "looking for manna" that just isn't there.
The reason God did not want the Israelites to store the food overnight is because he wanted the Israelites to be dependent on God and to know that EVERYTHING comes from God and that God provides for ALL of their needs. God is a very effective teacher, but it still takes trust in order to have a real relationship with him.
God goes on to say that "I will renew you the everlasting covenant (promise)". That promise normally refers to the promise of the Messiah who would come from the house of David. Isaih is a prophet, and this reading is coupled with this Gospel because Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise made to David. Jesus is the only person who can provide for ALL the needs of his people. It is his voice saying, "come to me heedfully, that you may have life".
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 145:8-9, 15-16, 17-18
R. (cf. 16) The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R. The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
The eyes of all look hopefully to you,
and you give them their food in due season;
you open your hand
and satisfy the desire of every living thing.
R. The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
The LORD is just in all his ways
and holy in all his works.
The LORD is near to all who call upon him,
to all who call upon him in truth.
R. The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
Reading II
Rom 8:35, 37-39
Brothers and sisters:
What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, 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.
Gospel
Mt 14:13-21
When Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist,
he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.
The crowds heard of this and followed him on foot from their towns.
When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd,
his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick.
When it was evening, the disciples approached him and said,
“This is a deserted place and it is already late;
dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages
and buy food for themselves.”
Jesus said to them, “There is no need for them to go away;
give them some food yourselves.”
But they said to him,
“Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.”
Then he said, “Bring them here to me, ”
and he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass.
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven,
he said the blessing, broke the loaves,
and gave them to the disciples,
who in turn gave them to the crowds.
They all ate and were satisfied,
and they picked up the fragments left over—
twelve wicker baskets full.
Those who ate were about five thousand men,
not counting women and children.
Jesus Feeds
The Gospel reading transitions perfectly from the 1st reading. It says that Jesus was in a deserted place. 5000 men and probably at least 5000 more women and children left whatever they were doing to be with Jesus. Now, there were no street lights in those days, so they probably went to be with Jesus right in the middle of work day. This shows that these people had strong faith in Jesus. Strong faith usually precedes many of Jesus' miracles. Since the men had probably left their jobs and the women had left their houses, they showed great faith in Jesus rather than concern for Earthly things. They must have traveled far because the place is described as deserted and then one of the disciples suggested that they should leave to go buy food for themselves. If the villages were close by, there wouldn't have been a discussion, it would have been easy to walk down the street to buy food.
The point is that these 10,000 or so people who went to see Jesus left what they were doing and walked a long way because they had faith in him. His disciples, on the other hand, were still struggling with their faith. Now why would the disciples have been struggling with their faith in Jesus? At this point in the Gospel of Matthew, they had already seen Jesus cure a blind man, heal life-long hemorrhaging, heal a paralytic, and control the weather. By this point, they should have known that Jesus could do anything he wanted.
Today, we are just like the disciples. We have seen miracles and we know very well that God can do what he pleases. The disciples told Jesus to "dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” In Mark's account of this miracle, the disciples ask Jesus, "are we going to buy $30,000 (200 days wages in today's dollars) worth of food and give it to them to eat?"1 Instead of asking this, the disciples could have remembered all of the miracles that Jesus had done and asked, "Jesus, will you provide us with food please?"
In the Gospel, Jesus tells them that "there is no need for them to go away." His response to their hunger was similar to the 1st reading, " You who have no money,
come, receive grain and eat.... Heed me, and you shall eat well". Jesus gave the people what they needed. This occasion is the only one of Jesus' miracles that is mentioned in all 4 Gospels. It is an important passage for us and it's an important message from God. This miracle foreshadows Jesus' supreme gift to us- his own body and blood at the Eucharistic. This Sunday, Jesus will again fulfill his promise to give us ALL that we need- the Eucharist- Jesus himself. We've got to have faith. As the responsorial psalm says, "The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs."
Concluding Thoughts
The gospel message this week is not that we should quit our jobs and become priests and nuns.2 God wants our hearts in the right place. Through this week's readings, he wants us to ponder the following:
- what things am I seeking which fail to satisfy?
- am I too concerned with storing up things for myself?
- in the beginning of the day, week, and year, am I concerned with growing closer to the Lord, or filling my life with more things?
- do I have faith in God, or am I relying on myself for everything I need?
- after all I have seen God do for me and others, do I act like I trust him completely?
- do I ever think about the many who are without food?
Real Life
A couple of weeks ago, I was in the Tampa Airport. I was hoping to give up my seat in order to get a voucher for a future flight. I prayed and asked for God's will to be done even though I wanted that voucher. It turns out, I was unable to get the voucher because there was no need for me to give up my seat because some people didn't show up. I was a little bit disappointed. The flight left late and so I missed my connecting flight from Atlanta to my final destination- Charlotte. I was standing in this 2.5 hour-long line when I heard that all flights were full and I would not be able to fly to Charlotte until 30-something hours later. I felt sure that the Lord would take care of me. About 1.5 hours after getting to Atlanta, the 2 businessmen in front of me told me that they were going to rent a car and drive to Charlotte. They had just met each other in line. They asked me if I wanted to go with them. I was very pleased and agreed to go with them.
We stopped for lunch. Despite the fact that Southern cities are usually 2-10% Catholic, both of these men turned out to be Catholic which was very surprising. They paid for the rental car, the gas, and for my lunch. I tried to give them money, but they would not accept it. One of the men asked me to pray for his son who was going to Iraq. The other man gave me contact info to a good priest who was once his spiritual director. I think that God wanted me to meet these men. If I had gotten my way with the voucher, I would have taken the later flight from Tampa to Atlanta. I would have never met those men. I probably would not have made it to Charlotte until the next day, and a hotel would have been expensive. But God got me to Charlotte and he fed me. He keeps his promises to us.
God loves us.
===========Mass Excitement #23==========
1- Mark 6:37
2- Some of us are supposed to do EXACTLY this
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