The Eucharist
As we leave the Easter season and its joyful alleluias, the Church is wise to ease the separation by reflecting on two of the most essential tenets of our faith. Last week, we celebrated the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, that wonderful relationship of love of the Father for the Son and Son for the Father…a relationship the Holy Spirit makes known to us and invites us to participate in. This week we look at the great Sacrament of the Church, the Eucharist. And we do so by reflecting on Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 and how it foreshadows that which we partake of each time we receive the Body and Blood of Christ. This miracle is recorded in all four Gospels and because of this, we need to reflect more deeply on it and its meaning and significance for us as Catholics. Let’s take a moment and try to come to some conclusions as to what this miracle should be saying to us.
First, we, like the disciples in today’s Gospel have very finite expectations of the “largeness” of God. Many of us have probably endured crisis and trials that might appear to our finite minds to be even beyond God’s abilities to deal with. “Where will we get enough food to feed all these people? How could even God help me out of the situation I have gotten myself into?” Guess what, God’s goodness and grace exceeds our imaginations. When we give to God what we have, He takes our gifts and amplifies them so that those meager gifts can now be used to serve God. “You feed them.”
Second, we are the arms and hands of God. It is through us, His children that others are blessed. Jesus did not take the few things they did have and place them into the hands of the 5,000 Himself. Instead, God desires that you and I be the agents of His compassion and grace. When I look at myself, do I trust that God can take what I have and serve the many just as He did with the fish and the bread?
Third, any amount of human striving can never fill the needs of God’s children. The disciples said what possible good are the few things we have to feed so many? Jesus bypassed human efforts to demonstrate that all HE provides is good and is sufficient. We are called to be the agents of His goodness and sufficiency.
Nothing we face in this life is too big for God. His ability to act on our behalf depends on two things: going beyond a human and finite understanding of His love. Second, with a larger understanding of the love of God for each of us, to say “Here I am Lord, take me. I am your hands, your arms, your love.”
- Deacon John Murrell