Seventeeth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, July 24, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Seventeeth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil
July 24, 2021

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, when he will lead us on a multi-week journey more deeply into the mystery of his life-giving love in the Holy Eucharist.
• The Church has been focusing this year, as we do every three years, on the Gospel of St. Mark. If we continued chapter-by-chapter in this progression, we would have tackled this week St. Mark’s version of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, the only miracle of Jesus recounted in all four Gospels. But the Church substitutes for us here St. John’s account of the same miracle, because St. John shows how Jesus used it as the launching pad for a long homily on the Eucharist, which will occupy our thoughts four of the next five weeks. The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish was a true miracle, something that happened in Capernaum, during the time of the Passover, one year before the Last Supper. But Jesus used this miracle as a sign of what he was intending to do for us in the Eucharist. Over the next several weeks, we will focus on the Eucharist. Today we’ll focus on the miracle itself.
• This miracle of the loaves and the fish teaches us very clearly about how God generally works and what he expects from us. When Jesus saw the famished crowds, he could have easily worked a miracle from scratch. He who created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, who fed the Israelites in the desert with miraculous manna and quails from heaven, could easily have satiated the hungry multitude ex nihilo. He didn’t need human or material assistance. But that isn’t the way he acted. He first asked his disciples what their resources were: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip replied that not even six months’ wages — say $20,000 by today’s standards — would have been enough to feed the crowd of about 5,000 people. The only one who had anything was a young boy, who had five loaves and two fish, food that wouldn’t even be enough to feed a typical family. The Lord started with the young boy’s generosity. Even though strictly speaking he didn’t need anything to work a miracle, he wanted to involve the boy, the apostles and the crowd in the miracle. He wanted to start with what the people had, and bring it to completion.
• This is the way God generally operates with us. He could choose to do everything by himself, but he knows that wouldn’t be ultimately good for us. Just like a parent often gives a child a project and helps the child complete it, so God out of love wants to give us the joy and dignity of being cooperators with him in what he’s doing for us and for others. Look at the wonderful story of the apostles. Jesus wanted to involve these simple men in the most important mission ever, the proclamation of the kingdom of God and the salvation of the human race. Rather than ascending into heaven, he could have chosen to stay here on earth until the end of time, traversed every land, preached in every town and village, healing, exorcising, forgiving, and establishing the Church, but he wanted them to share in this mission. He gave them his message and his authority. They weren’t necessarily talented men in worldly eyes, they were those who humanly had meager starting materials, they were sinners just like us, but they were capable of saying yes to God, offering to him their good will and the talents he gave them and allowing the Lord to multiply their offerings by his divine power.
• God wants to the same from us. Regardless of how many gifts and blessings the Lord has given us, he wants us to give them back to him so that he can do far greater things with them. We might have received only a minimal education in the faith through religious instruction. But the Lord can use this to make us a great apostle, like he did with St. Peter. We might not be very gifted as a teacher, but with the Lord, we might be the best of teachers to our children about what is most important of all. We might not be have much in the way of material possessions, but when we offer them to the Lord, he might use them to help save others’ lives in this world or in the next. We might be advanced in years or very ill and think that we don’t have much still to give, but offered to the Lord, they can be incredibly fruitful.
• This lesson has a very concrete application in what the Church is celebrating this Sunday for the first time, the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, which Pope Francis has instituted to be celebrated every year on the Fourth Sunday of July, a date chosen transparently to connect it, as closely as possible, to the July 26 feast of Saint Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary and grandparents of Jesus. In his Message in anticipation of this inaugural celebration, Pope Francis, an 84-year-old himself, asked grandparents and fellow seniors, “What is our vocation today, at our age?” It is “to preserve our roots, to pass on the faith to the young, and to care for the little ones.” While grandparents and seniors may not be as physically vigorous as they once were, they still have, he implied, five loaves and two fish to offer to God for the spiritual feeding of multitudes and he was not only summoning seniors to this work but leading the whole world in appreciation for what grandparents and seniors still have to give and do give. Just like the Lord “never, ever goes into retirement,” he stated, “there is no retirement age from the work of proclaiming the Gospel and handing down traditions to your grandchildren.” Since he was elected the Successor of St. Peter at age 76, he hasn’t slowed down in trying to live and teach the faith. Citing the Biblical figures of Abraham, Moses, Tobit, Eleazar, Elizabeth, Zechariah, Simeon, Anna and Nicodemus, all of whose major contributions to salvation history took place when they were advanced in years, he urged grandparents and seniors to see themselves as still very important laborers in the Lord’s vineyard (Mt 20:1-16), beginning with the “very precious resource” of their prayer and the example of love for the Lord and the gift of time, which they can richly spend with their grandchildren, teaching them, praying with them, playing with them, giving them encouragement and unconditional love, listening to their stories, attending their games, concerts and academic milestones, and in so doing helping their children and in-laws to grow in their maturation as parents. The world is so much better because of the way so many grandparents and seniors live out their vocation and this first World Day of Grandparents is an opportunity to celebrate them, thank them, commit to spend time with them, recommit to the covenant of love with them, and pray for them.
• The Eucharist is the reality to which the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish points. In the Eucharist, Jesus again takes bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it once more in a multiplication that is even more miraculous, stretching across the centuries, in every land, from the Upper Room to the altar of our parish Church. This is a sacrifice that has fed billions of God’s children and prepared them for the heavenly banquet. And in the very way Jesus established it, he shows how he wanted our intimate involvement. We use not grain and grapes, but bread and wine, the “work of human hands,” because God intended from the beginning our own contribution in this one great sacrifice to the Father. When the priest prays, during the beautiful dialogue at the beginning of the liturgy of the Eucharist, “Pray, brothers and sisters, that this sacrifice, yours and mine, may be made acceptable to God, the Almighty Father,” we focus on the reality that the Eucharist is not just the offering of Christ but together with Him, the offering of his whole Mystical Body, the Church. And there’s one other detail from the miracle that we shouldn’t miss, because it likewise applies to the celebration of the Eucharist. Clearly Jesus could have worked the miracle without leaving leftovers, but he did so to overflowing, leaving twelve wicker baskets full of extra food. We could say he was leaving one for each apostle, to remind each of them — and us — in a sense of what we’re supposed to do with the Eucharistic food we received, to live off of it and share that food with others. Rather than keeping the miracle of the multiplication to ourselves, Jesus wants us to share it, filling our baskets to overflowing so that we might lavishly share his gifts with others, offering our bodies, our blood, our callouses, our sweat, our tears, our joys — however many loaves and fish we have — out of similar love for God and others. As we prepare to share in this great and on-going miracle on Sunday, let us ask Jesus to give us the courage and the generosity to offer our whole lives to him and his service, so that he, in feeding us, may be able to use us and what he’s given us to feed others. Praised be Jesus Christ!

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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