Give them something to eat yourselves

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

After an exhausting day of public ministry, our Lord decides to withdraw and retire to a deserted place, hoping to escape the fawning crowds, recover from the fatigue and have time to commune with His Father. But instead of prayerful rest, He is confronted once again by the crowds who continue to trail Him and who refuse to leave Him alone. Instead of annoyance, Saint Matthew tells us that the Lord took pity on them. Saint Matthew’s words describe the tenderness and love that characterises a true Shepherd’s heart. We may sometimes sound tiresome even to our loved ones, especially when they have to put up with our whining, complaining and demands, but here’s the good news: God never tires of us. Here our Lord understood the hunger of the crowds and instead of just turning them away, He acts and He invites His disciples to do the same.

But there is a problem - a problem of limited resources and colossal needs, the perennial problem which plagues humanity. The Lord’s disciples point out this conundrum to the Lord and suggests this solution, ‘This is a lonely place, and the time has slipped by; so send the people away, and they can go to the villages to buy themselves some food.’ Logical and practical. But our Lord is adamant and counter proposes, ‘There is no need for them to go: give them something to eat yourselves.’ What a challenge? It would have been so much easier to just say, “This isn’t my problem”; “I can’t be the saviour of the world; I can’t solve every problem”; “People just have to learn how to take care of themselves.” But the Lord would not have any of these excuses. Instead, He enlists His disciples in the work of feeding the multitude. Our Lord, being God, could have done this on His own without their help but He chose not to. Instead, He deliberately chooses to involve them in His miraculous feeding.

They then retort with this reality check - they only have five loaves and two fish, to be shared among 5,000 men (not counting the women and the children). The feat, as noble as it sounds, is simply impossible! This problem would certainly resonate with those who are responsible for assigning seats for Mass every Sunday. They have to crack their heads in order to find solutions to accommodate the thousands who want to come to Church every week and to match this figure with the limited number of seats.

The juxtaposition of our Lord’s response and the disciples’ reaction presents us with two very different visions – a human and a spiritual one. The human vision recognises the problem, but assesses it based on these considerations – one’s ability and capacity to help and the availability of sufficient resources. There is nothing wrong with this. All good planning involves looking at what we possess before we commit to a project.

But our Lord provides us with another vision. A vision where He is fundamentally present and in charge. And when He is present, everything changes. Remember, that the Lord Jesus Christ is God, who is capable of not only performing miracles but there is nothing which He cannot accomplish or do. If disciples could not see beyond their inadequacies, our Lord is not limited in His vision. He sees the hunger of His people. He sees beyond the physical and material needs of persons. These things are important and necessary but man’s greatest need is spiritual. Our Lord can heal our bodies and fill our stomachs, but that is only a stopgap measure. What mankind needs more than a miracle worker or a philanthropist is a Saviour, because our greatest problem is not poverty, hunger or war, it is sin. And the Saviour chooses to enlist us in this grand work of salvation.

But what kind of people does He use? You would imagine that He would zoom in on the gifted, the resourceful or the rich. But He doesn’t. Instead, He takes anyone who is willing to risk sharing and trusting. In other words, any of us could be candidates of this grand scheme of His. How do we enlist? By yielding our littleness to the Master to use as He pleases. Our Lord tells us, “Bring them here to Me!” That’s the key! Give your inadequate resources and abilities to the Lord. The insufficient becomes more than sufficient when surrendered to Christ! We may think that we have nothing to offer, but the truth is that, all of us have something to offer – it’s just that it is inadequate. Jesus doesn’t ask you to give Him what you don’t have. He asks you to give Him what you do have. What Jesus did with this meagre supply of bread and fish is what He will do with us, warts, limitations, brokenness and all. If He can feed a multitude with that meagre ration, imagine what He could do with us.

So, the next time you receive an invitation to give something of yourself, do not just look at what you do not possess, look rather to what you do possess, humble and insignificant as it may seem to you. That is enough. Pope Francis reminds us: “the Lord makes us walk on his road, that of service, of sharing, of giving; and if it is shared, the little we have, the little we are, becomes riches; for the power of God—which is the power of love—comes down into our poverty to transform it. So let us ask ourselves this evening, in adoring Christ who is really present in the Eucharist: do I let myself be transformed by him? Do I let the Lord, who gives himself to me, guide me to going out ever more from my little enclosure, in order to give, to share, to love him and others?”