Give Them Some Food

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time A

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

All you who are thirsty, come to the water!  You who have no money, come, buy grain and eat; Come, buy grain without money, wine and milk without cost!  Isaiah 55:1

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38-39

Jesus said to them, “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.” Matthew 14:16

Piety

Our piety is what the Lord accomplishes with the meager resources we have by ourselves.  The Lord takes our nothingness and makes something out of it.  It is our piety that takes us to the water and blood that flows from the pierced heart of Christ, which is the source of the Sacramental life of the Church.  Our piety is the food of Christ that flows from our love of Christ.  We go to the cross of Christ and we bring our work with us.  Fed by Christ, we can feed those we serve by our apostolic work. 

Study

By our study, we listen and find him in the companions of our spiritual journey to Christ.  God speaks through the patriarchs and the prophets.  In the fullness of time he speaks through his only Son.  Our putting on the mind and the heart of Christ takes place by our drinking from the fountain of Christ’s love.  The Lord answers all our needs.  Nothing can separate us from the love of the Lord.  The Lord is present to our needs and makes us his presence to those who help us on the journey.

Action

In our prayer, we are able to accompany Christ as he grows up.  Saints are transparencies of Christ.  We learn all the sorts of ways that Christ is calling to us by their example.  They are updates of Christ by how they live out in their time what they have learned from Christ.  Christ is the good news of God’s love for us.  We are the continuity of that love by the way we share him with each other in season and out of season.  There is no limit to how much of God's love we touch when we allow Christ to feed us.  There is no such a thing as over-exposure to Christ.  Christ is the one thing in life we cannot get too much of by searching him out in each moment of our lives.  The Contemplative in Action Grace is our willingness to let Christ be the driving force of all our actions.  Whether we eat or drink or play, we are capable of doing all that we do out of love of Christ.  We can have as much Christ in our lives as we share.  He feeds us by Eucharist and allows us to grow in his life by each Eucharist we share.  What we eat becomes us.  Each Eucharist of our lives feeds us with his life.  We live for the day we can say that Christ lives in us.  We are meant to be his presence in our world.