The
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Dear brothers and sisters,
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| Detail, The Feeding of the Multitude Limbourg Brothers, Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry |
That multitude of people that
gathered around the Lord Jesus today did so in the hopes “that they were going
to come and carry him off and make him king” (John 6:12). The end goal in the
planned coronation, of course, was a military rebellion to overthrow the power
of the Roman Empire and restore the Kingdom of David. In this way, it can be
said that today the crowd and Jesus both turned their eyes toward the holy city
of Jerusalem, but for very different reasons.
When you and I approach the Christ
of God, what is it that we seek? What is it about him that draws us to him? The
individual members of the crowd approached him because they saw in him “the new Moses, worthy of power, and in the new manna, the
future guaranteed.”[1] They misinterpreted what
he said and did and failed to recognize his true kingship and the way in which
he came to fulfill the law.
The Mosaic
background provides the context for the claim that Jesus makes. Moses struck
the rock in the desert and out flowed water; Jesus promises the water of life…
The great gift, though, which stood out in the people’s memory was the manna.
Moses gave bread from heaven; God himself fed the wandering people of Israel
with heavenly bread. For a people who often went hungry and struggled to earn
their daily bread, this was the promise of promises, which somehow said
everything there was to say: relief of every want – a gift that satisfied
hunger for all and forever.[2]
Is
this not the same reason so many people still approach the Lord Jesus today,
perhaps even some here among us? “They saw the signs he was performing on the
sick,” and so the crowd followed him in utility, as a means to an end; rather
than seeking to befriend him, they wanted to make use of him (John 6:2). Do we
not often do the same?
Reflecting
on the situation described in the Gospel, Saint Augustine of Hippo noted that
“the governance of the world is certainly a greater miracle than satisfying the
hunger of five thousand with five loaves; and yet no one wonders at this.”[3] When was the last time we
simply sat outside pondering and marveling at how this world continues in
existence despite our best attempts to destroy so much beauty? Too rarely do we
contemplate the merciful governance of God. Saint Augustine went on to ask,
“For what could mere goodness do when there was not enough bread to feed the
hungry crowd? If power had not accompanied goodness, the crowd would have
remained fasting and hungry.”[4] For this reason we can
rightly sing today, “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs”
(cf. Psalm 145:16). But what does it mean to say the Lord answers all our
needs?
There are those today who falsely claim
that if we follow Jesus we will be both healthy and wealthy. This is what we
call the Prosperity Gospel. To be sure, it is not found in the Gospels of Matthew,
Mark, Luke, or John, for it is the Lord Jesus himself who says to us, “If
anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross
daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Saint Peter, too, says to us, “Beloved, do
not surprised that a trial by fire is occurring among you, as if something
strange were happening to you” (I Peter 4:12). According to worldly wisdom, to
require self-denial and to promise sufferings is a rather foolish way to
recruit new followers, yet both lie at the heart of the true Gospel. But then,
as Bilbo Baggins said, "adventures are not all pony rides in May
sunshine."[5]
Why?
When
Jesus praised the widow’s mite, he said of her, “I tell you truly, this poor
widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings
from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole
livelihood” (Luke 21:3-4). Rather than promising to reward her with endless
wealth, as some would have us understand the Lord to say through the words of
the Psalmist, Jesus commends her for giving all she had; he praises her because
she responded to the need of others in the same way he responded to our need.
When
they attempted to carry Jesus off to make him their king, the crowd turned
their eyes to Jerusalem from which they hoped Jesus would provide for their
earthly wants. Jesus, however, turned his eyes to Jerusalem, “to the Cross, the gift of love, and to the
Eucharist, the perpetuation of this gift: Christ makes himself the Bread of
Life for humankind.”[6]
Because the Lord Jesus does not want to leave us fasting and hungry, he joins
his power to his goodness and he gives us something more than bread; seeing how
desperate is our need, mired as we are in sin, he gives us himself, as we shall
hear in the coming weeks, because he knows that “man hungers for more” than
bread. In fact, he knows that man “needs more. The gift that feeds man as man
must be greater, must be on a wholly different level.”[7]
For
the Christian, the presence of bread naturally evokes the Eucharist, a
connection which Saint John will make undeniably clear next week.
What we call
“bread” contains the mystery of the Passion. Before there can be bread, the
seed – the grain of wheat – first has to be placed in the earth, it has to
“die,” and then the new ear can grow out of this death. Earthly bread can
become the bearer of Christ’s presence because it contains in itself the
mystery of the Passion, because it unites in itself death and resurrection.[8]
Knowing
we hunger for more than bread, Saint Augustine asked: “Who is the Bread of heaven, but Christ? But in order that man
might eat Angels' Bread, the Lord of Angels was made Man. For if he had not
been made Man, we should not have his Flesh; if we had not his Flesh, we should
not eat the Bread of the Altar.”[9]
And if we do not eat the Bread of the Altar, the Body and Blood of the Lord, we
cannot be truly satisfied, nor can we unite our sufferings to his and share in
his redemptive mission.
Why is it that we have come today? Have we come
because we have were attracted to the healings and miracles Jesus performed and
so expect him to give us some tangible benefit? Or have we come instead simply
to ask his friendship to be renewed between us, to ask him simply for the gift
of himself? If we have come here today to the altar of the Lord without the
desire of receiving Jesus and his friendship, we have not come for the right
reason. “Dear brothers and sisters, let us ask the Lord to enable us to
rediscover the importance of feeding ourselves not only on bread but also on
truth, on love, on Christ, on Christ’s Body, taking part faithfully and with
profound awareness in the Eucharist so as to be ever more closely united with
him.”[10]
Amen.
[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 29 July 2012.
[2] Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict
XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism
in the Jordan to the Transfiguration. Adrian J. Walker, trans. (New York:
Doubleday, 2007), 264-264.
[3] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 24.2.
In Ancient Christian Commentary on
Scripture, New Testament Vol. Iva: John 1-10, Thomas C. Oden, et al, eds. (Downers Grove, Illinois:
Inter Varsity Press, 2006), 216.
[4] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 24.3.
[5] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again (New
York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997), 31.
[6] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 29 July 2012.
[7] Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict
XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism
in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, 267.
[8] Ibid., 271.
[9] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 130.2.
[10] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 29 July 2012
