Scripture Reflection, July 26, 2009: Only Five Loaves?

Scripture Readings:
2 Kings 4: 42-44
Psalm 145
Ephesians 4: 1-6
John 6: 1-15

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“When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, ‘Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?’” Not long ago, as I was coming out of the Passionist residence and crossing the street to go to my office at CTU, a woman with a small child came up to me and asked me for something to eat. This happens fairly frequently in Hyde Park and sometimes I am not sure how I should respond. I was a bit cautious because this woman is a “regular” who, I think, has a problem with addiction. I did not think that I should give out money, but I was able to offer them a couple of sandwiches and some fruit to eat. Like Jesus, we raise our eyes and encounter hungry people all around us these days.

In his recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), Pope Benedict XVI offers a substantive presentation of Catholic social teaching in light of the challenges that face the global community today. In the course of his letter he addresses the problem of world hunger. Recent United Nations statistics reveal that there are more hungry people in the world today than ever before. Benedict observes that hunger “still reaps victims among those who, like Lazarus, are not permitted to take their place at the rich man’s table” (n. 27). He reminds us that “feed the hungry” is an ethical imperative that flows from the gospel (especially Matthew 25). The pope affirms that “the right to food, like the right to water, has an important place within the pursuit of other rights, beginning with the fundamental right to life” (n. 27). Benedict proceeds to call for a collective search for long-term solutions to the scourge of hunger – solutions which will eliminate the structural causes that give rise to it and promote the agricultural development of poor nations. These are strong words from the pope that most of us will find very challenging, particularly at a time of economic uncertainty in our own country.

The readings from Second Kings and from the Gospel of John speak forcefully about God’s desire to feed his hungry people. An unnamed man offers the prophet Elisha a gift of the first fruits of his harvest. Such offerings were usually presented to God as an expression of thanksgiving or reserved as showbread that would later be eaten by the temple priests. Elisha, however, says that this offering must be given to the crowd of hungry people for their nourishment. God blesses this action with an abundance that results in something left over. Jesus faces 5000 hungry people and challenges his disciples to meet their needs. The miniscule gift of the loaves and fish offered by the young boy is transformed into an abundance that satisfies the hungers of this vast crowd. By the Sea of Galilee Jesus fulfills what was proclaimed in Psalm 145: “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.”

I suspect that all of us at times have the feeling of standing before a crowd of 5000 hungry people, all of whom want us to respond to their needs. The need in our world is so great, and we are so limited in our resources. Apart from the global needs for food and water, sometimes the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the people with whom we live and work seem to overwhelm us. We feel that we have only five-loaves-and-two-fish-worth of energy and resources in the face of the demands of 5000 needy people.

The Scriptures for this Sunday do not offer us magical solutions to the daunting challenges of meeting the needs of those around us or of the many impoverished people across the globe. But they do assure us that God blesses every single effort that we make to attend with compassion to his hungry people. God grants an abundance where we think there is only insufficiency. No such effort ever goes to waste. In our personal lives we can trust that, while we cannot be “all things to all people”, our sometimes meager gestures of compassion and understanding are indeed blessed in ways that exceed what we can see and measure. In our lives as members of the human family, the Scriptures invite us to trust that we can find ways to meet the urgent needs of our most vulnerable sisters and brothers across the globe. We must summon forth the initiative, creativity and courage needed to face these problems together.

As the Lord Jesus feeds us at the Eucharistic table this Sunday, may we renew our commitment to respond with compassion to the many hungry people in our world.

Robin Ryan, cp