In
our Gospel readings these past two weeks, we’ve heard how Jesus and his
disciples are trying to get away for some rest and relaxation, but the crowds
keep following them. Jesus
and his disciples have captured the imagination and the attention of the people
wherever they go. The
crowds hunger for many things in their lives. Jesus
realizes that part of this hunger is a physical hunger, that feeding their
physical appetite will not only satisfy one level of hunger that they have, but
it will be a sign that he will be able to feed the other types of hunger that
they have as well. With
the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, Jesus and the
disciples feed the hungry crowds. The
crowds take as much food as they want until they are satisfied, with there
being baskets and baskets of food left over. Through
this miracle, the crowds recognize Jesus as the true prophet of God who has
come into their midst.
We
come to Jesus for different reasons in our lives, don’t we? We
sometimes come to Jesus in a self-center way, just thinking of ourselves. Yesterday, on Saturday July 25, we celebrated the feast of St James the
Greater, the patron saint in our parish in Tupelo. In
many way, in the Gospel, we can see how James and his brother John were
obsessed with temporal things, with having a seat of power next to Jesus, of
being more important and more esteemed than the other disciples that Jesus
called. Jesus
even called James and John the Sons of Thunder, a nickname they earned probably
because of their feisty, fiery temperament. But
we know the rest of the story of James’ life of discipleship, of how he obediently
went off to Spain as a missionary, encountering much hardship and little
acclaim, of how he returned to Jerusalem humbled and defeated, becoming the
first apostle martyred for the faith. The
Good News of Jesus Christ has the power to transform us and change us. The
Body and Blood of Christ that feeds us each time we gather around the table of
the Lord has the power to transform us in order to us to be servants to God and
our brothers and sisters, in order to witness to Christ’s values and his
ministry, in order to be leaven in a world that so badly needs the Gospel
message.
The
crowd in today’s Gospel was drawn to Jesus because they saw him as a great
teacher. The people hungered to hear his
proclamation of God’s kingdom. They followed
Jesus into the wilderness perhaps because they knew that their souls were lost
in the wilderness as well. The
crowds hungered for the words Jesus spoke. They
wanted something more. They
felt that there was something missing in their lives. But
we also see that while they were following Jesus, their earthly reality pressed
upon them as well. They had a physical hunger for food that needed to be
satisfied as well. They
hungered for God, but they hungered for things of this earth as well.
There
is indeed a tension in our lives between the temporal and the divine – between
the things that are of the earth and the things that are of God. We as
Christians are to reach out in the reality of the here and now of our earthly
existence, but our eyes are to be fixed on the eternal life that we have in our
Lord. Our
liturgy is the source and summit of our lives as Catholics, but living out the
Eucharist in our daily lives is essential as well. We
reach out in works of charity and mercy.
A big part of our parish budget goes to helping out those in need and
reaching out to people in our community and throughout the world. Our
daily bread reaches out to feed our spiritual hunger. Our daily breads reaches out to feed our
earthly needs and our physical hunger.
St
James, our parish’s patron saint, transcended his need for power and significance
in an earthly sense to become a humble servant of the Lord who willingly
sacrificed his life for the Gospel. The
bread from heaven and the Word of God that fed him and nourished him transformed
him into a true disciple of Christ. May
we as modern disciples follow in his footsteps.
No comments:
Post a Comment