The imagery from today’s gospel should appeal to all of us who have been home makers and who have struggled at one time or another to feed the children or those left in our care. It concerns the story of Jesus feeding a great crowd with five loaves and two fish. The journey made by the disciples in this story is one that we have all made. We come to various moments in our lives when we are confronted with our own material or even spiritual insufficiency. A child needs a loan to finish their studies, you have to pay the mortgage on your house, you wish to start a new business and you are short of cash, you are beginning in a new position at work and you doubt whether you have the leadership skills required. Like the disciples you realized that you have arrived at a “lonely place”…you want to send away to the surrounding villages so that the people could buy some food. Then, some Jesus person, or some memory forces you to “give them something to eat yourselves.” You dig deep into your own ingenuity… Jesus’ response to this situation of shortage is very instructive. Every little gesture is important. According to the gospel Jesus “gave orders that the people were to sit down on the grass…” As we face our difficulties in life, our material insufficiency, our lack of money or talent or whatever the first important thing to do is to RELAX….let go of our anxiety. We “sit down on the grass”…running around and shouting will do us no good. Next the reading says that Jesus “took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing.” God’s power becomes operational when we cultivate an attitude of gratitude, when we cultivate in ourselves an attitude of thanksgiving and trust. We take our eyes off of ourselves and we place fix our gaze on the Lord. Everything is in his hands. Thus the reading invites us to “raise our eyes and say the blessing” over our limited finances, our meagre talent, our limited health. We are invited to sit down, relax in front of the Lord and bless God so that God may bless us. Many of us know this miracle from personal experience, after a month of anxiety, we place all in God’s hands and we find money for the rent, we go through a period of financial strain after divorce and through a lot of prayer and ingenuity we manage to keep a roof over our heads and those of our children, we are faced with the difficult problem of a family member and after prayer to the holy spirit, we discover that we have in our limited life experience enough resources to give and advice and assist the one who comes to us for counselling. PRAYER Lord we thank you for this word. We pray that always we may see our “five loaves and two fish” through eyes of gratitude and faith. We pray Father, that we may always have the presence of mind , in the face of our challenges to sit down, take these limited resources, “raise our eyes and say the blessing” so that they can be distributed and shared with many others. Amen.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 03:58:13 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015