I remember Cardinal Hume, the bishop who ordained me, telling us priests once, about a trip he made to Ethiopia, which was going through a severe famine crisis. While he was wandering through a refugee camp there, he met a young boy who took his hand in one of his hands, and with the other hand, rubbed his stomach, indicating his two basic needs: food for his stomach, love for his heart.
Our readings today show God providing for both of these needs in his people. The prophet Elisha shows great compassion and generosity for the hundred people under his charge in our first reading, being willing to share with them the small amount of barley and grain that he has been given, but also through his faith in the word of God, seeing that small amount of food multiplied to feed all of those people. This is just one of many “feeding” miracles in the Bible. Elijah multiplies a poor widow’s meagre amount of meal and oil so she and her son don’t starve to death in a time of famine. God also miraculously provides food and drink for Elijah himself during a long walk to the mountain of Horeb, where he is due to meet with God himself at a time of persecution from the king and queen of his country, Israel. And, of course, there is the great miracle of the provision of manna for Israel during their forty day’s journeys from Egypt to the Promised Land. Tucked into that one miracle feeding story are a couple more where God provides meat on a couple of occasions to feed nearly a million people.
The psalm today extends that provision also to all of creation. “The eyes of all looks to you and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.” A thought which is echoed in even more vivid detail in Psalm 104: “You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use … the trees of the Lord are watered abundantly … the young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God … these all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them they gather it up, when you open your hand, they are filled with good things” Just think: when you are pouring dog food or cat food into the dish for your pet, when you feed your goldfish, or hamster or chickens, or put more hay out for your horse or cattle, you are working with God to take care of the needs of his creation!
So it is natural, to extend this theme into the New Testament, to read this story from our gospel today about Jesus feeding five thousand (at least) people with just a few loaves and fish. Here everything about this story shows it to be a precursor to the narrative of the Last Supper, our first Mass, in which Jesus will provide divine food and drink to satisfy for all time to come the spiritual need of his people in the Eucharist. This story of the feeding of the 5000 is given in each one of the four gospels, a sign of how significant it is in the mission and ministry of Jesus.
An important thing to notice as you read through the accounts of all these feeding miracles in the Bible is how many of them come about because of the Lord’s compassion for his creation. Often these are accompanied by reference to the compassion shown by an individual for the suffering of others, which is an echo of the tremendous love and mercy felt by God looking on the same suffering. Think of Elisha in our first reading, giving all the food he has to others, not holding anything back to satisfy his own need. Or remember the boy in the gospel who selflessly hands over his lunch to Jesus. It is a small thing to be sure, measured against the enormous amount of people to be fed. But that act of kindness and generosity is the springboard to Jesus multiplying these meagre rations and feeding the multitude. The lesson is very clear to us; each act of selflessness and generosity we make out of compassion to help someone who is in need is never too small or unimportant when placed in the hands of our great God and Provider.
And, in case you are wondering, it still goes on today. If you have a chance, look up on YouTube the story of “The Miracle of El Paso”. The story is about a Catholic prayer group in El Paso, on the border of Texas and Mexico, who are led by God to share their Christmas dinner one year with the Mexican peasant people scavenging for food in a local garbage heap. However, when they get started, word goes out rapidly that there is someone giving out free food and hundreds of people suddenly appear and it becomes obvious that there is just not enough food and drink to go round. And yet, the food and drink never give out! This happened back in the 1960s, but my community of Lift Jesus Higher had a similar experience just a few years ago, where we had run out of food at a dinner we were providing to raise funds for our Peru mission, because a lot more people we had not prepared for came in to gate-crash the dinner. And yet, and yet, the food never run out. God was honoring our efforts of compassion for the needy people of Peru, and multiplied the food before our very eyes. So long as there are people in need, and other people who feel compassion for them in their suffering, God is in their midst. “Let the oppressed see it and be glad” affirms Psalm 69, “you who seek God, let your hearts revive. For the Lord hears the needy, and does not despise his own that are in shackles” (vv 32-33). Psalm 34: 10: “Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” And of course, you remember Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want (for anything).”
God does not ignore or dismiss our practical human and material things. But he is always most concerned that we don’t stop there, but rise above that to consider our deeper, more spiritual needs. Our need for love, forgiveness, hope, peace, and life. And God, through Jesus, wants to provide also for all those needs, and to provide them “In abundance” (John 10:10). Jesus himself says, in the gospel of Matthew: “If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?” (Matthew 7:11). Those “good things” that God wants to provide are not confined to material objects. A little earlier in the same gospel, we hear Jesus saying to a crowd of tough, down-to-earth, pragmatic people, who had to struggle for the sheer basics of a living to feed their families: “Do not worry, saying ‘What will we eat?’” or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’” For pagans strive for these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt 6: 31-33).
Jesus is saying to his listeners that they are Jews, the favored people of God, that their wants and desires should rise above the material things that the pagans are striving after. What they need to strive after themselves is God’s kingdom,and not their own, and God’s righteousness rather than just wanting to look good and holy in the eyes of others. To have God’s righteousness is to desire the things that God’s heart yearns after. And what God’s heart yearns after most of all, is what Jesus expresses so well in our gospel today: “that no-one be lost, (or perish)”. That none be lost or perish. Jesus is saying that above all God wants his people, not to end up in hell at the end of their earthly lives. He wants to see us saved, enjoying eternal life with him in heaven. He sent his son into the world, as John 3:16-17 makes clear: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” That’s it, brothers and sisters, that’s what God and his Son, want for us, that we be saved, not lost, not perishing in hell for all eternity. “God relentlessly desires that we all be saved and come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). What God wants to know from us, believers in him and his Son, is this. Do we have the same compassion for lost souls that God has? And what are we doing about it? Are we risking in faith to share what we believe with others, to evangelize them, and lead them out of the darkness of unbelief or misguided belief, into the wonderful light of eternal life with God? Do we also relentlessly desire that our family, our friends, our neighbours, or work colleagues “come to know the truth” and be saved?
You and I might feel that, faced with the great mass of non-believers in the world today, that our puny efforts will never achieve much. But here we are, brothers and sisters, in our Mass, about to see the greatest miracle on earth, the changing of our puny gifts of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Himself, and offered to us in our physical and spiritual needs, and let us say to ourselves: “Nothing will ever be impossible for God!”, as angel Gabriel told Mary at her annunciation, and let us respond as Mary did: “Behold the servant of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:37-38).