Homily for 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

August 2, 2026
Collect
Is 55: 1-3
Matt 14: 13-21
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden
(Lucas Cranach)

“Draw near your servants, O Lord, and … with unceasing kindness restore what you have created and keep safe what you have restored” (Collect).

What has God created that we pray him to restore and keep safe?

The 1st chapter of the book of Genesis tells us:  “God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them” (1:27).

We’re asking God in his “unceasing kindness” to restore his own divine image in us, to restore an image that we’ve clouded, even broken, by sin.  All the brokenness in the world is the result of a broken relationship between the Creator and his creation.  That’s a big theme in the opening chapters of Genesis.

The Scriptures this morning tell us how God does his restoration work, then keeps it safe.

In the 1st reading, the Lord invites “all who are thirsty” to “come to the water” (Is 55:1).  Water’s precious, necessary, and life-giving everywhere, very notably so in the arid Middle East, where God spoke these words thru his prophet.

Scientists get excited when space explorations find some evidence that there may once have been water on Mars or some other celestial body.  Where there’s water, there may be life.

Closer to home, one of the humanitarian projects our Salesian mission office supports, especially in Africa, is the drilling of wells and installation of pumps so that remote villages may have clean water for the people, their livestock, and their fields.

The Indian Express, Aug. 17, 2021

Yet closer to home, for years 7 Western states have been discussing water rights to the shrinking Colorado River for their cities, farms, and industries, unable to agree on how to distribute the water, and facing a resolution handed down by Washington.

Our hearts thirst for water, too; not the physical water of a well or a river, but the water of a healthy relationship with God.  And this God offers us, as Christ taught Nicodemus, the Pharisee who came to him secretly, seeking the kingdom of God (John 3:1-15); he offers us a new birth, a new creation, by water and the Holy Spirit.  Thru Baptism God restores what he created, viz., the divine image in a man or woman.  That image is a reflection of God’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

A soul filled with grace is a living, glorious image of Christ our Lord.  St. Irenaeus of Lyons, a 2d-century Father of the Church, taught that the glory of God is a fully alive human being, a restored image of God himself.

God, thru Christ, has also provided for the safekeeping of the divine image in men and women.  That’s foreshadowed in what Jesus does in today’s gospel.  Moved with compassion for a hungry crowd, Jesus takes a few loaves of bread, blesses them, breaks them, and gives them to his disciples to distribute.

Last Supper window
OL of the Assumption, Bronx

At his Last Supper, he also “took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body’” (Matt 26:26).  Still moved with compassion for us, he repeats those sacred actions when his bishops and priests celebrate the Eucharist.  The sacrament of the Lord’s body and blood, the mystery of our faith, keeps safe what Jesus has restored, the divine image in our souls.

The disciples gave Jesus’ multiplied bread to the hungry crowd.  But really it was Jesus giving it.  It’s Jesus now who turns bread and wine into his body and blood and distributes those gifts to his hungry and thirsty followers. 

“All you who are thirsty, come to the water!  Heed me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare” (Is 55:1,2).  Come and be given life; come and be restored.