The Catholic Liturgy for the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, July 28, 2024. Gospel of John 6:1-15. Theme: Blessed and Sent!
The first Christians saw a direct connection between the miracle of the loaves that we just heard and the miracle of the transformation of bread and wine that happens at every Mass. As a matter of fact, this connection was so clear to them that they took the Greek word “eucharist” that St. John uses in today’s story to describe Jesus’ giving thanks to God, and they made it the name for our greatest act of Liturgical worship. That’s how closely they understood the relationship between these two things. So let's do a quick review of both to see what they saw.
Jesus took the loaves of bread, gave thanks to God the Father, blessed and miraculously multiplied them. Then it was distributed and everyone was fed. Through this miracle-bread the people came to recognize Jesus as their long-hoped-for Messiah and Savior. Now let's compare this with the Mass. The priest takes bread and wine and gives thanks to God the Father. He blesses them and the Holy Spirit miraculously transforms them into the Body and Blood of Christ. Then this Eucharistic miracle-bread is distributed to the people and through it we come to recognize the Risen Lord Jesus as being truly present among and within us as Messiah and Savior.
The similarities are very easy to see, but you know there’s another commonality shared by both the miracle of the loaves and that of the Eucharist that is not as readily apparent. And this is that in both cases those who eat Christ’s miracle-bread are deeply touched and inspired to go out and tell others. The people who had been fed did not remain passive recipients of the miracle. When they left the hills of Galilee they went back to their villages and told their families and friends all about this Jesus and what he had done for them. With this in mind the Church has always taught that our reception of the Eucharist cannot be separated from the duty of evangelization, a word which means the spreading of the Gospel, sharing the Good News about Jesus. Like those people in the crowd, after we are fed with the miracle-bread of the Eucharist we too are supposed to go back to our everyday lives and tell others about Christ and what he has done for us.
As a matter of fact, the Church highlights this aspect of the Eucharist at every Mass. At the conclusion of the Liturgy the deacon dismisses the congregation by saying, “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord'' or “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your lives.” This is not simply a convenient way to end a ceremony and dismiss a crowd. Instead, it is a sacred sending-off ritual through which Jesus commissions us, like he did for his disciples, to go out and invite others into the Kingdom of God. It’s a very important and indispensable part of the Liturgy and so, unless someone has an occasional pressing need, they shouldn’t leave Mass right after Communion or before the dismissal. Because if they do they miss out on this most special and sacred moment by which Christ makes us his official missionary disciples.
Pope Francis says that those two words, “missionary disciple”, describe and define who we are supposed to be as Christians in the 21st century. The word “disciple” literally means a “student”. And as Christians we are lifelong students in the school of Jesus the Teacher, learning from his Word and example what it means, what it looks like, to truly love God and to truly love others in both word and deed. And as missionaries we are officially sent out as ambassadors of Christ, tasked with sharing what we have learned in the school of Jesus. This is what the blessing and the sending at the conclusion of Mass are all about. Missionary discipleship.
So it is that at the end of every Mass, Jesus invites us to join him in satisfying people’s spiritual hunger. It’s up to each one of us to decide if we are going to do so with the reaction of Philip or the response of Andrew, both of whom co-starred with Jesus, so to speak, in today’s Gospel. Now Philip told Jesus that feeding the crowd was basically an impossibility. No way could they accomplish it! He was defeated before he even began. Andrew, on the other hand, looked around for a solution. Instead of being overwhelmed by the apparent impossibility he found some food, meager as it was, and brought it to Jesus. He admitted that it wasn’t sufficient but he still handed it over to the Lord. And as we know, the end result was that the hungry crowd on the grassy hills of Galilee that afternoon ended up being fed to beyond their capacity.
Now I think this shows us that Jesus can do amazing things through us if we just bring to him whatever little it is that we have to offer, and then trust in him to make up for what we lack. Jesus was pleased with Andrew’s faith and humble offering. He took it, blessed it and we know the rest of the story. In the same way, if we have a heart to be a missionary disciple, if we have a heart to share our faith in Jesus, but don’t think that we have what it takes to do so, let's let the Lord decide. Let’s bring to Jesus whatever it is that we have, no matter how little or insufficient it may seem, and then be ready to become amazed at what he can do with it once he takes it, blesses it and uses it to send us out as his missionary disciples.
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