(Isaiah 55,1-3; Romans 8,35.37-39; Matt 14, 13-21,
18th Sunday of Year A)
Reflecting on the gospel reading of today, the first
thing that strikes the mind is the compassion of Jesus; He saw a great crowd and had compassion on them. To have compassion does not just have
to do with mere sentiment and emotion; it is not simply saying on seeing
someone who is suffering: oh poor him/her without doing anything else. Compassion
means suffering with, feeling the suffering of the other
person as if one is himself/herself undergoing the pains the suffering; it
means putting oneself in the physical and psychological situation of the one
who is suffering. Jesus felt the suffering of the crowd as if he were the one
suffering; he put himself in the crowd is position that was spiritual hunger,
suffered physical hunger pangs and also the sick among them, who were suffering
physical pains. What else did he do? He taught them, preached the
word of God to them, and healed the sick and procured food for them. Jesus’
first lesson to us this
Sunday is:
We should learn how to be compassionate, in the true sense of the word, and
that is to say: putting ourselves in the position of the disadvantaged, our
brothers and sisters who have physical and moral pains to bear. We should not
just be satisfied with empty words by which we purport to alleviate their
suffering. We need to do more concrete things. Mother Theresa of Calcutta
Jesus further proposes to us something very important,
which we may rightly name the second lesson of today’s gospel: he calls us to share what
we have with those who do not have. Jesus did not want to conjure loaves of
bread and fish (he could have done that anyway) in order to satisfy the hunger
of the crowd, but rather said to the disciples:bring to me your five loaves of bread and you two fish. He wanted them to put the little
they had at the disposition of and share them with the crowd. From this little,
he worked the miracle of the multiplication of bread. Jesus asks us to
do the same today in respect to the needy among us. Often it is asked: Why can’t God intervene miraculously so as to alleviate such
and such miserable situation of suffering? This is just a way of washing our hands off, and
running away from, our responsibilities. God’s wish is that we alleviate
the suffering of the needy with the much we have, which we even received from
God. It is also his wish to ease the suffering of others through the loving
attention and care of those who are better off. It is when all human
possibilities are exhausted, that we should invoke the help of Almighty God. Unfortunately,
our society is increasingly from day to day, becoming more selfish. The sharing
of goods, amenities, love and concern, that was the hallmark of our traditional
society and that was the quality of our Christian communities is fast fading
out. In our parishes, stations, zones and villages, the aged, sick and
the hungry are left to suffer and often die in abject neglect and penury while
the next door neighbor wastes food and resources. Where is our Christian
charity? Why do we want to help our fellow men and women who suffer? What do
our rich Catholics do with their wealth, as thousand and thousands of children,
sick, widows and orphans live in abject poverty and die when one could argue
that it is not yet their time to die. Let us look around us and we will
discover that so many people nowadays die of hunger, because they are unable to
provide one square meal a day? A good number of our people die because no one
could provide some fund to get them cured in a hospital. Such deaths could have
been prevented if our faith is translated into concrete action of charity. Jesus
is telling all of us to share what we have with out needy neighbors. When we
share the little we have he knows how to multiply it as well as its effects.
Jesus by the miracle of the multiplication of loaves
wishes to anticipate the miracle of the Eucharist. There are similarities of
words and gestures in the narrative of the multiplication of bread and that of
the institution of the Eucharist: He took bread, said the
blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples. What does the
coincidence of gesture and words tell us?
(a) Just as Jesus multiplied the material bread for
the body, in the same way, he can also multiply the spiritual bread (i.e. the
Eucharist) for the soul.
(b) As the people have need of nourishment for the
body, more so do they need the food of the soul, that is to say, Christ, the
bread of eternal life.
(c) It is necessary
to get nourished by
Jesus in order to be like him
and to have the same sentiments like his and in particular to have compassion towards our brothers and
sisters in need, to know how to share with them what we have; in short to know how to
conquer our egoism or selfishness and be open to love and charity. Let us note one important point of the narrative of the
multiplication of loaves: No one can outdo God in generosity! After
feeding five thousand men, as well as many women and children, Jesus left
twelve baskets full of bread and fish at the disposal of those who supplied him
with five loaves of bread and two fish. God will restore all generosity we show
to him through our needy neighbors. He will somehow restore all, and with
interest. Whoever gives to the poor, gives to God. There is more joy in
giving than in receiving, in giving than holding tight egoistically to what we
have. Let us in today’s Eucharistic celebration ask Almighty God to bestow on
us the compassion and generosity of Christ who not only shared with us his
divinity by sharing our humanity but also died out of compassion in order to
save us! Amen!
+John I. Okoye
The Holy father in today’s Angelus summarized (in his last words) it also in the same words :COMPASSION, SHARING AND EUCHARIST
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