July 31, 2011 - Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 - Is 55:1-3
Thus says the LORD: All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money,
come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!
Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what fails to satisfy?
Heed me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare. Come to me heedfully, listen, that you may have life. I will renew with you the everlasting covenant, the benefits assured to David.
Responsorial Psalm - Ps 145:8-9, 15-16, 17-18
R. (cf. 16) The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.
R. The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
The eyes of all look hopefully to you, and you give them their food in due season;
you open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.
R. The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
The LORD is just in all his ways and holy in all his works.
The LORD is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth.
R. The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
Reading II - Rom 8:35, 37-39
Brothers and sisters: What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Gospel - Mt 14:13-21
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.
Reflection
The most prominent theme of today’s Gospel passage concerns the feeding of the multitudes, and how this miracle serves as a palpable metaphor for the manner in which God “feeds” His people and provides for their needs. The insight is straightforward and worth taking to heart—if we come to be in the presence of Jesus, we will be fed. Simply by showing up, our welfare is guaranteed. We would do well to integrate this message into our daily life, trusting that God cares for us and asks nothing in return, as the prophet Isaiah declares.
And yet there is another very significant subtext taking place in today’s selection from Matthew; one so subtle as to be easily overlooked. So familiarized with the imagery of Jesus multiplying fish and loaves, we may quite naturally skip right past the opening lines of the Gospel—Jesus receiving news of his close relative’s death.
In contemporary America, the relationship between cousins varies immensely. Some families live miles, even plane-flights apart, seeing one another only every few years for a major family event or gathering. Others grow up close by, forging deep and intimate bonds from their earliest years, feeling a sense of kinship so close it is as though they are siblings. This latter dynamic, in which first cousins are very nearly brothers/sisters by virtue of proximity and intimacy, is more apt to describing the way in which most tribal societies are organized.
Jesus almost certainly grew up playing with his cousin John, and the two undoubtedly felt an intense, fraternal love for one another. This childhood bond was most likely strengthened by their shared ministry—John saw his own vocation not to become, himself, the focus of his work, but to prepare the way for Jesus. In the Synoptic Gospels, it appears too that the disciples of Jesus are personally acquainted with John and his ministry, so it stands to reason that Jesus and John, though they be preaching in different parts of the region at any given moment, kept in close touch.
With this in mind, we return to the first line of the Gospel, wherein Jesus is said to have “withdrawn in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” So powerfully affected by news of the death of his close friend was Jesus, that he paused his own ministry and disappeared for a while to grieve by himself. In the Gospel of John, we see Jesus weep—really, a better translation would be “convulses uncontrollably”—at the tomb of Lazarus. He is so overcome with sadness that his body literally trembles and groans. While there may have been a crowd to witness him break down over Lazarus, in this instance, he went off by himself. There is every reason to believe that, in the privacy of his escape, he mourned with equal vigor and emotion. Jesus—God Himself—was every bit as overwhelmed by the loss of a loved one as we are. To say that Jesus, the Second of the Person of the Trinity, was really human is to make an abstract assertion. To attest that he found himself weak at the knees, sick to his stomach, and flush in the face upon learning that his dear friend had died—is to concretize that abstraction. Jesus, true God and true man, wept. And, more importantly, he was so potently affected, he needed to take time off from what he was doing in order to deal with those powerful emotions.
This is no trivial matter, particularly not for us, contemporary disciples, as we struggle to find peace amid similar circumstances. How do we respond when a parent dies? Or, a close friend? John and Jesus were less than a year apart, and they worked “in the same field.” How shaken would we be if a close friend, our own age, not even in his/her mid-30’s yet, were taken too soon, much less killed violently as was John?
This Gospel speaks to us in our pain and our vulnerability. It affirms for us the need to take time away from our usual routine to deal with the suffering that a death brings about. There is nothing inherently noble nor Christ-like about repressing this sort of pain and pushing through our mundane tasks. God Himself felt pain, and God Himself took time off from work to try and re-group before he attempted a return.
Eventually, Jesus did return, his cheeks still stained with dried tears and his body fatigued from the emotional enervation of all-consuming mourning. Eventually, he went back to work. Not only can Almighty God, Creator of the Universe and Sustainer of All That Is, empathize with us in our pain, He can relate to us in what it feels like to have to go back to work, drained from the experience of a death. Muscles tired. Eyelids sore. Emotions bled of their vitality. All that, and Jesus manages to be moved by pity at the crowds who need him. With the help of his colleagues, the disciples, and with grace from God, who is Father, Jesus comes up with the energy to minister to the people.
The point of the Incarnation, of God become human, is that we might relate better to God. That we might be able to come to God in our moments of unmitigated agony, as well as unbridled joy. That we can know there is a person who understands the true depths of our heart and sits beside us throughout, embracing us and giving us strength. The Jesus of today’s Gospel is precisely that person, and we are invited into a real friendship with him. If ever we find ourselves struggling to cope with the death of a loved one, desperately wondering how we will ever return to work on Monday, we should feel some solace knowing that God himself has some experience in that department.
Questions for Reflection
1) Have you ever lost a loved one? How did it feel? What sorts of emotions did you experience? Anger? Sadness? Outrage? Disbelief? How did you deal with them?
2) What sorts of support have you had during moments of intense suffering in your life? What sustains you during these times? What sorts of supports do you have right now? If they are not what you would like them to be, how can you make them a reality?
3) Do you feel comfortable going to God when you are in this sort of pain? Why/not?
