HOMILY FOR THE EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR IN THE ORDINARY TIME – YEAR A

Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Osmond Anike

Readings:

First Reading:: Isaiah 55:1-3 – Come and eat.

Responsorial Psalm:Psalm 144(145): 8-9, 15-18 – You open wide your hand, O Lord; you grant our desires.

Second Reading:Romans 8:35, 37-39 – No created thing can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ.

Gospel:Matthew 14:13-21 – The feeding of the five thousand.

God decided to visit the earth, so he sent an angel to survey the situation prior to his visit. The angel returned with this report: “Most of them lack food, and most lack employment”. God said, “Then I shall become incarnate in the form of food for the hungry and work for the unemployed”.

This short anecdote from Tony de Mello summarizes the mission of Christianity: Becoming all things to all men. Whether we agree with it or not, the best strategy to get a hungry person to listen to you is not by shouting: “Praise the Lord!” A hungry person doesn’t understand that. Despite his shouting and threats, Moses could not get the Israelites to listen to the words of Yahweh during their sojourn in the desert because the people were extremely hungry. They only began to comprehend what Moses was saying after they had been fed with manna from heaven.

Although material food only does not suffice for the salvation of mankind as Jesus insisted during his encounter with the devil with the words, “man shall not live by bread alone”, there has to be a balance between material need and spiritual need. The Lord’s Prayer bids us ask, among other things, for our daily bread. It was in the spirit of providing for daily bread that Jesus did not want to send the people away in the gospel of today. They had been following him since morning and had not taken their daily bread. Therefore, instead of sending them away, Jesus wanted the disciples to “give them something to eat”.

The Lord, indeed, gives us our daily bread. But we, on our part, have to provide the raw material (so to say) with which to act upon. I think that the multiplication of the loaves would not have been possible if the boy who had fives loaves and two fish had refused to make these available for sharing. Elsewhere in the Bible, the widow whose oil did not run dry wouldn’t have had that miracle if she had refused to share the very little she had with the prophet Elisha.

In the same way, God is calling us through the prophet Isaiah in the first reading to “come and buy corn without money”. Yes, we have to buy without money; but we “buy” with something else namely, generosity and the spirit of sharing. If we provide the raw material, God will act on it in such a way that everybody will be satisfied: We shall “all eat as much as we wanted”, and even with some leftovers. This, indeed, is the spirit of Christianity. The day people become willing to share their excesses with those who have nothing at all, hunger will automatically disappear from the face of the earth.