If you are looking at a particular sermon and it is removed it is because it has been updated.

For example Year C 2010 is being replaced week by week with Year C 2013, and so on.

Friday 26 July 2024

17th Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(2nd Kings 4:42-44; Ephesians 4:1-6; John 6:1-15)

Jesus went with His disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. On the way He asked His disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”   And they told Him, “John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and others, one of the prophets.”   

And so, dear People of God, a considerable number of pious Jews of Jesus’ time were expecting the promised Messiah to appear as one of the prophets of Israel.  Therefore, when in today’s Gospel reading,  Jesus told His disciples to have the people sit down and prepare for a meal, He undoubtedly remembered the miracle performed by the prophet Elishah of which you heard in our first reading, when the prophet miraculously fed one hundred people using 20 best barley loaves saying:

            Thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’

Take special note of Jesus, however, because He is no mere restored prophet, He is one much greater than that!  He, for example, does not invoke ‘the Lord’ as did Elishah, He simply told His disciples to make the people sit down, gave thanks for the food available, as was customary for all pious Jews, and His will was directly accomplished!

He was feeding over five thousand people, using only one boy’s measure of food -- given most probably by his mother on his setting out from home to follow the new Galilean prophet called Jesus -- a little parcel containing just five pieces of bread and two little fish --  and He said nothing!!

Jesus deliberately played down the miraculous aspect of that feeding because He knew that the people were getting too excited about Himself and the renown His miracles had already won for Him; moreover, some of those who had just been fed, having seen what Jesus had just done, were wanting, planning, to seize Him immediately and make Him king!!  We, however, are just told that:

            Jesus withdrew again to the mountain …. by Himself !!!

Dear People of God, Jesus loved His people, was concerned about their needs, but He did not want to be used by excited followers for their own purposes … make Him king as they then wanted.

Jesus wanted to be known, loved, and obeyed in the calm strength and deep intensity of forthcoming Christian faith and humble, self-less, commitment.   

Looking still more closely at the difference between Our Lord’s miracle and that of the prophet Elisha again, we see that whereas Elisha multiplied bread, Jesus multiplied loaves and fish… what does that difference help us to understand about Jesus?  In what way does it instruct us about the Kingdom of God that He was introducing?

Bread, of course, reminds us of the word of God:

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.  (Matthew 4:4)

Fish, however, evoked the end days for which that other great prophet Ezekiel (47:7-10) predicted that a stream would flow from the Temple in Jerusalem and become a river that would purify even the Dead Sea:

The Lord God said to me, “This water flows towards the eastern region down upon the Arabah, and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh.  Wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish.  For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh.  Its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea.

Note, note most carefully dear friends in Christ, in the Kingdom of God being introduced by Jesus, He Himself, JESUS, is the new and only Temple!! And that water flowing from the Temple envisioned by the prophet Ezekiel in Jerusalem was a God-given, partially understood, vision of the water soon to be seen flowing from the pierced side of the Christ on the Cross in His sublime act of saving love and salvation on Calvary!

The multitude of fish-of-all-kinds foretold by the prophet foreshadowed, and would be realized in, the stream of sanctifying and purifying grace, that GIFT of Jesus, His most Holy Spirit, and the many, many, many wonderful gifts to be bestowed on Jesus’ saintly Catholic followers in the times of Mother Church soon to come.

Ultimately the Greek word for ‘fish’ in the New Testament became an acronym among the early Christians -- ICHTHYS -- for the ancient creed: ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour’.

Elisha, as a prophet of God multiplied bread; Jesus, being far more than a  prophet,  multiplied bread, symbol of God’s word, and He also multiplied fish, being a present fulfilment of God’s promises to the remaining faithful few Israel, and a treasury of help for all His followers who would become members of His Body, the Catholic Church, bringing to the fulness of revelation that the Word of God is ultimately the very Person of Jesus the Christ, become man – born of the Spirit from Mary the Jewish Virgin of Nazareth -- for the salvation of all mankind.

Jesus symbolically left His Apostles 12 baskets’ full of food, that is, a plenitude of food for the new Israel to be founded on faith in Jesus by the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus in the power of the Spirit of Jesus.  This nourishment for God’s Christian People, looks like bread and wine, because it is to be food for His disciples; but it is not like ordinary food which we eat and, by digesting, change into our own bodily substance, since the food that Jesus gives is intended to gradually change the recipient into a member of the Body of Christ living by the Spirit of Christ.

Saint Paul told us in the second reading that, for the disciples of Jesus, on their way, not to the holy mountain, but to their heavenly home:

There is one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.

Notice those words: “there is one body and one Spirit”.  “One body” refers to the Church as the Body of Christ, but it can also be related to the one Body, the one food, for all those who are living members of the Church which is Mystical Body of Christ. “There is one Body and one Spirit” because the Body, the Eucharistic Presence of Christ, is given so that we might be endowed -- every one according to his or her measure -- with the one Holy Spirit of Jesus, in Whose power alone it is that each of us will be enabled to walk towards the mountain of the God and find our heavenly home there.

That is why it is so important for good Catholics to appreciate the real nature of the Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist: He is there as food for the way – to sustain those who are on the way.   And to those on the way to what is beyond their imagining and largely hidden in the future, He says, ‘You have My promises, so’:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  (Matthew 7:7-9)

That is what Jesus expects from all ‘good’ Catholics, that we ask with unshakeable trust, seek with patience and perseverance -- unashamedly persistent in our knocking -- because a true Catholic is one who is spiritually alive, that is, one constantly searching for Jesus, and in Him -- by His Spirit -- for the Father.  

Dear People of God, the humble appearances of our Eucharistic Food should help us appreciate that we can best show our love and appreciation of Jesus in the Eucharist by walking humbly and perseveringly along that journey whither He is calling us.  It is in and through this simple Eucharistic food-for-the-way that Jesus communicates to us His Spirit so that He, the Spirit, abiding in us and working with us, might enable us to progress along the way of Jesus which ultimately leads to the glorious Supper of the Lamb in that heavenly home which is the Father’s house:

In My Father's house are many rooms.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2)

Jesus does not ask great actions to be seen by men from those who eat and drink such simple food, but He does expect what the angels rejoice to see: an ever deeper, more humble and grateful confidence and peace – spiritual joy -- in the hearts and minds of those aware of and responsive to the love of Jesus knocking gently at the door of their conscience; and they themselves -- like ever new-born children -- forming those initially stumbling, but growing ever more sure and secure words                        

Come, Lord Jesus, come!