Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) (Vigil)
August 1, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The text that guided the homily was:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, in which we enter into the scene of Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish to feed the crowd of five thousand men, likely five thousand women, and probably 15,000 kids. It allows us to ponder three important aspects of our Christian life.
- The first is the importance of prayer. The scene begins with St. Matthew’s telling us, Jesus “withdrew … to a deserted place by himself.” Jesus wanted to pray and he knew he needed to get away from the hustle, bustle, push and muscle of the multitudes. This type of prayerful withdrawal was very common for Jesus. The evangelists tell us that he would regularly rise early before dawn to go off to a deserted place to pray (see Mk 1:35 and Lk 4:42). Before he commenced his public ministry, he went out into the desert for a month and a half to pray and fast. At the Transfiguration, he took Peter, James and John up an exceedingly high mountain in order to pray. Jesus was, in short, constantly withdrawing from the crowds in order to do what was most important, which was to enter into undistracted communion with his Father in prayer. He did this not merely out of desire and need, but also as an example, to form in us a similar need and desire. Jesus is constantly saying to us, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest for a while” (Mk 6:31). These words refer, of course, to our daily prayer, but also to more extended periods of prayer like retreats. The summer is a time in which we should try to make such time for prayer. I will be beginning my annual retreat on Wednesday. Please keep me in your prayers.
- The second thing we encounter in this Gospel is Jesus’ compassion for the multitudes. When Jesus saw the throng awaiting him when he was trying to pray, it would have been easy for him to have gotten a little frustrated or irritated, but he, rather, was filled with mercy. St. Matthew tells us, “His heart was moved with pity for them.” That expression is a softening of the original Greek verb “esplangchnisthe,” a more literal translation of which would be he was “sick to his stomach” with compassion as he saw the crowds. And we see what he did: He cured their sick. Then he fed them. That verb esplangchnisthe is used by the Gospel writers to introduce, likewise, how Jesus out of gut-bursting mercy taught the crowds, forgave sins, and had us pray to the harvest master for laborers and then called those praying to be laborers. Jesus is always looking at you and at me with mercy, and he’s healing, feeding, teaching, forgiving, and summoning us to join him in his mission of mercy. That brings us to the third point, which concerns how Jesus wants to incorporate us into his ordinary and miraculous exercise of compassion for the crowds.
- In the Gospel, out of concern for the crowd, tried to get Jesus to dismiss the crowd “so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus says, “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.” Very often, we try to pass the buck on others’ difficulties, saying, “that’s their problem,” not mine. Jesus wanted them, he wants us, to feel responsible. We should also note that when Jesus saw the infamished crowds, he could have easily worked a miracle from scatch. He who created the heavens and the earth from nothing, who fed the Israelites in the desert with miraculous manna and quails from heaven (Ex 16:13,31), could easily have satiated the hungry multitude all by himself. He didn’t need human assistance. But that isn’t the way he wanted to act. He wanted to start with his disciples’ generosity. He wanted to involve them in his miracle. He wanted to start with the best and the most that people had, and bring their generosity to completion. They had meager resources, just five loaves and two fish that they seemed to have obtained from a little boy. But Jesus started there. The Shepherd and Lord whom Psalm 23 had prophesied would lead his sheep to “green pastures” and “set a table before them” had them sit down on the lush green grass as he took the gifts, looked up to heaven, said the blessing, broke the loves and gave them to the disciples to give to the crowds. The gifts multiplied not at the beginning — because they didn’t keep coming back to Jesus — but in the distribution. And Jesus “overworked the miracle” created more than was needed such that each of the twelve apostles was left with a wicker basket full of leftovers as a reminder of what God can do when we unite our resources to his, our compassion to his, our prayer to his.
- All three of these lessons — the call to prayer, Jesus’ mercy, and his desire to incorporate us in his miracles and merciful love — all converge in the celebration of the Eucharist. The raw material for this sacred synaxis is not grain and grapes but bread and wine, which is a combination of God’s fruit of the earth and vine and the “work of human hands.” God incorporates our own work and sacrifice into this great miracle to which the multiplication of the loaves and fish points. In the offertory, the priest says, “Pray, brothers and sisters, that this sacrifice, mine and yours may be acceptable to God the Almighty Father.” The Eucharist is the union between Christ’s sacrifice of his whole life culminating on Calvary our sacrifice, the sacrifice of our work, our time, our resources, indeed of our whole life, offered as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God. The celebration of Mass is where Jesus draws us with his eyes, heart and guts full of loving compassion, to heal us, feed us and strengthen us in our vocation as the laborers in his vineyard. The Mass is where we go into the desert apart from worldly distractions to meet Jesus. The Mass is where he seeks to unite us to his compassion and send us forth to carry his mercy to the world. The Mass is where we bring ourselves and all our efforts, even if it seems a few bread crumbs and half an anchovy, placing them into Jesus’ hands so that he can unite them to his looking up to heaven, blessing and breaking them, and then giving those gifts back transformed so that they can be multiplied in caring for the immense crowds. Jesus never stops looking at us and at the world with compassion. Nothing can separate us from that loving glance. And as we prepare for Mass on Sunday, we ask Jesus so to transform us in this time with him in the desert that we may return to the world with wicker baskets full to feed the deepest hungers people have.
The Gospel on which the homily was based was:
When Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist,
he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.
The crowds heard of this and followed him on foot from their towns.
When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd,
his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick.
When it was evening, the disciples approached him and said,
“This is a deserted place and it is already late;
dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages
and buy food for themselves.”
Jesus said to them, “There is no need for them to go away;
give them some food yourselves.”
But they said to him,
“Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.”
Then he said, “Bring them here to me,”
and he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass.
Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven,
he said the blessing, broke the loaves,
and gave them to the disciples,
who in turn gave them to the crowds.
They all ate and were satisfied,
and they picked up the fragments left over—
twelve wicker baskets full.
Those who ate were about five thousand men,
not counting women and children.
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