Your Five Loaves And Two Fish Are Needed

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, August 2, 2020

John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus Christ, the great prophet who first recognized Jesus, witnessed for him and introduced him to the people has just been beheaded on the orders of Herod Antipas. The enemies of truth and workers of iniquity have murdered a great man who boldly fulfilled the mission that God gave him. Jesus hears about his death and immediately withdraws from public scene to a deserted place by himself. The abrupt and violent death of John, his cousin, may have shaken him. So, he needed time to sort things out, to mourn, to pray, to commune, and to reflect over his own fate. Unfortunately, the crowds of people seeking for all manners of favors from him did not afford him the sacred space and time he needed to grieve and to pray. Although he withdrew to a lonely place, people nevertheless got wind of his whereabout. They traveled on foot from their different towns to his “hideout.” Upon seeing them, Jesus is moved with pity for them. Casting aside his own need of quiet time, he attends to them, cures their sick, and no doubt, preaches the message of the kingdom to them. By sunset, his disciples came to him, and encouraged him to dismiss the people so that they can go to their villages and find food to eat. But Jesus balked and said, “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.” Five loaves and two fish were all they had. Mathematically, it is not enough to feed a crowd of people. But Jesus, the Lord of life has a plan. After ordering the people to sit down, he took the five loaves and two fish, looked up to heaven, from where all help comes from. Then he broke the loaves, gave them to his disciples and the disciples in turn distributed them to the crowds. Everyone ate to their satisfaction and some left overs were also picked up. According to today’s Gospel, those who were fed were more than five thousand people. 

Sisters and brothers, each of us can without hesitation identify with Jesus’ disciples concern for the people. Like the disciples, we feel the struggles, pains, misfortune, hunger, and suffering of others. Like the disciples, we feel the injustice being meted on some of our fellow citizens. Like the disciples, we understand their reasons for calling for justice and a new normal. When we hear stories of people who are sick with no health insurance, we feel for them. When we see, encounter or hear stories of those who work but still live in extreme poverty, we feel for them. When we see videos and pictures of people who hunger and thirst for their human dignity to be respected and valued, we feel for them. When we watched the public gruesome murder of George Floyd, we feel sorry for him and his family. There is no shortage of people who feel sorry for the misfortune of others in the Church and in the society. We always wish that things can be different and better. Like the disciples, we wish people well but often have no intention of taking positive steps to make ugly situations better. Like the disciples, what prevents us from taking positive action is often our own realistic assessment that the little we are able to do is not really going to make any appreciable difference. 

But today’s Gospel (Matthew 14:13-21) shows us that when our sorry feelings for the misfortune of another is matched by action, even the little we are able to do will be multiplied by God’s grace and power to a degree that they become sufficient enough to help others. When God is involved, miracles happen. But why didn’t Jesus just go ahead and produce bread, fish and other kinds of food to feed the crowd? It is because God needs our  five loaves and two fish in order to perform the amazing miracle of feeding a multitude. When Mother Teresa of Calcutta was told that her work for the poorest of the poor in India was only a drop in the ocean, she replied, “Yes, it is; but without that drop, the ocean would be missing something.” As individuals, we suffer all kinds of hunger— for food, for love, for peace, for justice. God is able and willing to satisfy all our hungers. But he is waiting for men and women who believe enough to give up their lunch pack, their “five loaves and two fish,” which God needs to make the miracle possible.