Homily for
the
17th Sunday
of Ordinary Time
July 29, 2018
Ps 145: 10-11, 15-18Nativity, Washington, D.C.
“You
open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing” (Ps 145: 15).
In
the life of St. John Bosco there are at least 3 instances in which he worked a
multiplication miracle. One instance in
1849 involved humble boiled chestnuts, a treat for 600 of his oratory boys
returning from a hike to a cemetery on All Souls Day. Because of a communications lapse, an
insufficient supply of the goodies had been prepared. Don Bosco just ladled them out to every boy
like the supply was endless. And it was.[1]
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| (art by Nino Musio) |
Better
known is the time in October 1860 when the Oratory ran out of bread—the baker
having cut off credit—and there was but one basket of rolls to give the
hundreds of boys for their meager breakfast.
But Don Bosco personally handed out the rolls—not his usual practice. Every boy got his breakfast, and the one
basket was still full at the end.[2]
And
there was a feastday in the late 1840s when the sacristan, aware that there
were just a few consecrated hosts left in the tabernacle, prepared a big, full
ciborium for Mass but then forgot to put it out at the altar. When hundreds of boys came forward for
Communion, Don Bosco was taken by surprise, with almost no hosts to give them. A quick prayer—and Communion for everyone who
came to partake, with the original number of hosts left over.[3]
Ps
145—part of which was our responsory this evening—for ages was a customary
prayer of blessing before meals in religious houses and institutions. As a whole, it’s a prayer of praise to God,
the Lord of creation; a praise of God’s dominion established by his providence
and his righteousness. Observing all his
wondrous creation and his wondrous deeds, all of humanity responds by
glorifying him.[4] The psalm reminds us of God’s providence
toward his people in the past and invokes it in the present.
We
just recalled 3 ways in Don Bosco’s life in which God provided for his people,
for the poor boys of the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales who were abandoned in
one way or another until Christ and his Mother brought them to Don Bosco, 3
ways in which the Lord opened his hand and satisfied the desires of those poor
little ones.
God
“satisfies the desire of every living thing.”
He gave Don Bosco’s boys chestnuts as a treat; he gave them the bread
they needed for the day; he gave them the Bread of eternal life.
In
the Scripture readings for today, we hear of God’s providing his people with
their bread for the day, miraculously providing it: Elisha feeding 100 people with a mere 20
barley loaves, and some was even left over (2 Kgs 4:42-44); and Jesus feeding
5,000 men, besides the women and children, with 5 barley loaves and 2 fish
(John 6:1-13). We know, moreover, that
Jesus was feeding the crowd with more than bread and fish. They were coming to him hungering for life—in
hope of healing for their bodies, some of them; and healing for their hearts,
most of them. Jesus fed their souls as
well as their bodies by teaching them; John doesn’t mention that, but Mark does
(6:34), and of course all the evangelists speak extensively of how Jesus taught
the people.
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A 15th-c. New Testament
with illustration of the miracle
of the loaves and fish
|
St.
John reports that, feeding the crowd with these 5 loaves, “Jesus took the
loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them” (John 6:11). That’s eucharistic language; John even uses the
verb eucharistésas for “gave thanks”—foreshadowing
what is to come as we continue to read John 6, as we shall do for the next 4
weeks.
While
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus tells the apostles
to distribute the loaves and fish to the people, in John Jesus does it
personally. He personally cares for his
flock. There’s no more personal way that
he cares for his flock than by feeding us with his own Person in the Eucharist,
opening his hands to satisfy the deepest desires of our living souls: the desire for a union of our hearts with
Someone, the desire of our hearts for eternal life. Jesus will speak of that in coming weeks in
relation to the bread that he gives us which is neither barley nor the manna of
Moses.
Thru
Jesus, God does directly open his hand for his people to satisfy the desires of
our souls, thru the Eucharist, thru consolations, thru forgiveness, and in
other ways. But God also uses us—needs
us—to be his open hands to satisfy people’s desires. To paraphrase St. Paul (2 Cor 1:3-4), we can
offer to the sorrowful, the lonely, the frightened the same consolations, companionship,
and encouragement we have ourselves received, from Christ or from others. We can commend the virtues of our relatives,
friends, and colleagues, encouraging them to persevere in their Christian
discipleship.
When
we pray in the Our Father that God give us our daily bread, we’re not asking
only for the Eucharist but also for the bodily food that we need. “He opens his hand to satisfy the desire of
every living thing.” Certainly God has
made the earth rich enuf to satisfy the hunger of every human being. If some go hungry—and millions do, every
day—it’s not for lack of God’s providence but for human selfishness: the greed of warlords who destroy crops,
plunder herds, destroy villages, and compel people to flee for their lives; the
greed of wealthy landowners who begrudge their peasant neighbors a patch of
land to farm or a living wage; and perhaps even the gluttony of the Western
world that grossly overeats and so uses a grossly disproportionate share of the
world’s agricultural resources.
In
the Our Father we also pray, “Thy kingdom come.” May the Lord’s dominion be recognized. May it be present among us. That could be a prayer for the 2d coming of
Christ. It’s certainly a prayer that we
may place ourselves under God’s rule.
Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was at hand. In part, his kingdom is evidenced by our
lives. One of the formulas for dismissal
at the end of Mass is, “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.”
We
who have been blessed with so many material blessings can open our hands to the
less fortunate, imitating the Lord of creation who is “holy in all his works”
and “near to all who call upon him” (Ps 145:17-18). Opening our hands might involve offering food
for the body, as when the parish has a food drive for the needy at Thanksgiving
or other times, or helping with a food pantry or soup kitchen. Wasn’t it a marvelous thing that Judge Brett
Kavanaugh, on the same day that he was nominated to the Supreme Court, kept his
appointment to help at Catholic Charities’ soup kitchen, and without any
fanfare? Just helping God open his hand
to satisfy the desires of his hungry people.
There
are, of course, numerous other desires that people have which we can help the
Lord to satisfy. Feeding the hungry is but
one of the corporal works of mercy identified in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Others include sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the
sick and imprisoned, burying the dead, and giving alms to the poor.[5] There are also 7 spiritual works of
mercy. It seems to me that somewhere in
these lists we ought to include also defending immigrants and the victims of
racism and speaking up for the unborn and single moms and the genuine needs of
the elderly and sick (which do not
include assisted suicide).
So,
yes, God does “open his hand to satisfy the desire of every living thing,” both
simple desires like chestnuts and other treats, and serious desires, both
material and spiritual. We may be sure
that our Lord Jesus meets some of those desires directly; but, as he did thru
Don Bosco some 160 years ago, God often relies upon us to be his open, generous
hands.
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