18th Sunday in Ordinary Time The Gospel for Today: Matthew 14: 13-21 August 2, 2020
It seems to me that today is one of those days when God wants to be sure we get the message! And it’s as if God is sitting us down and showing us The Holy Word of Revelation and saying: “Okay, I don’t want YOU to miss it: so my word’s in bold print and italic text and highlighted so YOU get it!” And we respond: “Yes, Lord: It’s all about food, and being fed, and how YOU feed us the best of all!” And so, everywhere we listen today, we hear an echo of our Responsorial Psalm: “the hand of the Lord feeds us, who answers all our needs.”
Non-believers must sometimes think we’re off our rockers: they point to the COVID-19 Virus and ask, “This is what your God is giving YOU? This is how your God feeds you, protects YOU? Forget it.” And we, who know God’s true nature, and that God doesn’t punish us, for we are God’s beloved ones, are deputized to point to where God’s work is being done IN THE MIDST OF this pandemic horror. Please let me share two examples to illustrate.
1st, science tells us wearing masks deters the spread of this virus, so let’s wear these masks to protect one another, and let’s offer it up as a sacrifice, that is, make it a holy offering for a special intention: for instance, it could be to seek some healing between myself and a particular family member/relative with whom we seem to argue a lot. Is that not what Jesus is saying in directing his disciples: “You, apostles, disciples, YOU give these people some food yourselves.” Jesus tells us here to be part of the SOLUTION, and not to join the whining complaining crowd that recounts WHAT WE LACK. And aren’t we relieved when the Apostles finally DO bring to Jesus the loaves and fishes, entrusting them to Jesus rather than hoarding them, or gorging themselves privately on the food, in a selfish way that violates every gospel mandate?
2nd There’s a refrigerator, and several keepers of the refrigerator, which is plugged in on the ground, beneath the northernmost Bronx station on one of NYC’s subway lines. Some people who have an abundance of food drop off food for the needy, homeless, jobless, and struggling families from the neighborhood and elsewhere. And the beauty of all this giving – of electricity, food, and Freon to keep it col: the poor obtain this food without question, without charge, without someone demanding to see their immigration papers. On its face value, it appears to be an example of unconditional love, one of which we have heard echoed in the past in Scripture passages. Our first reading today signals that open invitation from God to us: see Isaiah 55: 1-3.
Because we have heard that pledge and promise of God to care for us throughout the Scriptures, today may sound like a renewal of that promise. But today’s miracle also joins the chorus of what The Bible also tells us about our heavenly life to come, that is, when Christ will be all in all. We pray it as part of the church’s prayer, at the Rite of Committal spoken at burial services: “your loved 1 has gone to her/his rest in the peace of Christ. May the Lord now welcome him/her to the table of God’s children in heaven.” So today’s Gospel is also an important component of Jesus’ describing your invitation to God’s reign, and to the banquet feast that will never end.
One way us to connect this holy liturgy and the call to holiness in our daily lives is to explore that central theme of hunger, about which Jesus certainly preached often in his public ministry. From one perspective, we as individuals woke up, got out of bed, and decided to come and gather today to pray the Eucharist; at same time, knowing that God is the initiator of love, we responded to God’s invitation today. And while we know people come to the Eucharist for many different reasons, we ALSO know that we are conscious of different hungers in ourselves that need to be fed. Let’s ask our Savior and Brother Jesus Christ to help us this summer: let us ask him to help us to identify the hunger God is trying to address in YOU today, a Resurrection day in mid-summer.
