The Lord Will Provide Our Needs
A Homily for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Kings 4:42-44
Ephesians 4:1-6
John 6:1-15
Beginning this Sunday and for the next several weeks, the Church is taking us through portions of the Sixth Chapter of the Gospel of John. Not only is this one of the most important chapters of the entire New Testament, but it could be argued that it is one of the most theologically significant chapters in all of the Bible. This may be why the Church goes to great pains to ensure that every so often on the liturgical calendar of readings this chapter takes pride of place and we have reached such a period in the calendar of the Church beginning today.
The first portion of John 6 that the Church gives us to examine is John's account of the feeding of the Five Thousand. The initial thing that is noteworthy about the fact that five thousand people were fed that day is that there were five thousand men there, but we know that there were more than just men there, there were also women and children, so in reality there were a lot more than five thousand people, which makes the account of what happened that day all the more remarkable.
The Gospel tells us that this great multitude of people followed Jesus because they saw the miracles that he had done, they had heard his teaching, and they wanted to see and hear more. They came to be fed with spiritual food, but Jesus understood very well that even on the best of days, those who come to be taught God's Word and come for the right reasons have physical needs. How many of us leave the church and go to a favorite restaurant or go home to lunch? The spiritual food we have received here doesn't negate our physical hunger.
As with so much else about the 6th Chapter of John, however, the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand is itself a Eucharistic prefigurement, a way to show that Jesus can take a little and make it plenty, he can give us that gift of finest wheat. Yes, something very plain and obvious happened on the one hand in the Gospel today, Jesus took five loaves and two fishes and fed a multitude of people. Jesus is many things, but the most important of those is that Jesus is God Almighty, he's perfectly capable of doing what he did in this passage. We can be certain that in that moment in time it seemed incredibly miraculous to the people present there and it certainly was, it would be that to us even today. Jesus was showing his followers so many things in his actions here. The most important thing perhaps that he was showing is that not only will the Lord provide for spiritual needs, but if we trust in him he will provide physical needs as well. The key is to understand that the Lord will provide our needs, not necessarily our wants and desires. He understands our needs before we ask them, and he knows what our needs are as opposed to our desires, and he understands this far greater than we do. Often, things we think we need are not the things we need, they're merely wants and sometimes even wants in the present moment that are temporary and fleeting.
Later in the 6th chapter of John, Jesus will explain to his disciples that he is the Bread of Life, that anyone who eats this bread will live forever. In the miracle in this passage, Jesus is giving a physical example to the world of this eternal provision of the Living Bread. When he performs the miracle of feeding the five thousand, the people don't quite understand this, but he does go on in this very chapter to explain it to them and to us. Certainly, for many of the people who were there that day when this miracle took place, this was a living and real encounter with the Lord Jesus, one that made their faith in him real and made many of them truly believe in him.
Jesus was also showing in this miracle that he can provide for his followers spiritually as well. In order for Jesus to do this our hearts have to be open to his spiritual as well as physical provision, we have to let him be the Lord of our life and our heart. He is showing us what he can do to provide for those who have trust in him. Sometimes we overlook his provision. He provides for us and we don't even really see it, we assume that our pleas for his help have gone unanswered if things don't turn out exactly the way we want, but often if we look back at our lives in hindsight we can see that he did answer us, and he did provide for us as he promises he would do, but often not in the way that we are expecting when we ask it. Who would have expected that the Lord could feed a crowd that in reality was probably well over five thousand people until they were satisfied and have plenty left over, and then he could do this from five loaves and two fish?
It can be difficult for us to understand that the Lord Jesus, Second Person of the Trinity, who is God, has an understanding of what we need that we cannot even fathom. If we are hungry or thirsty, he's aware of it. Whatever our genuine material needs are he is aware of them. He also knows that sometimes when he provides for us we don't see his provision for what it is, and we could do better about seeing God in our everyday lives.
If I may, I'd like to share a story about something that actually happened to me. When our previous pastor, Father Patrick, was still with us, I would sometimes join Father Patrick on his trips to say Mass for the Handmaids of the Precious Blood at Cor Jesu Monastery in New Market before they got the assignment of their permanent chaplain, Father Randy Stice. On one of these occasions when the time came to prepare the altar for the consecration, Father Patrick reminded me that unlike normal, when at the Monastery, fill the chalice all the way up with wine. Empty the cruet into the chalice, he said, which is of course not what we normally did and do. The reason for this is because all of the sisters partake of the precious blood from the chalice in the tradition of their conventual Mass. So when the time came for me to pour the wine into the chalice before the consecration, what did I do? I did what I was used to doing, and poured just enough for Father and myself in the chalice, something Father Patrick didn't even realize until after he had consecrated the Precious Blood.
To this day I do not know how it happened, but there was enough of the Precious Blood in the chalice for every one of those sisters to get a sip, and enough left over for me to finish off the last drop. I can't explain it, but when he saw it, Father Patrick compared it to the feeding of the five thousand.
The Lord saw a need, and the Lord provided. It wasn't tidy or neat, but it was what was needed in the moment, and I was thankful for it.
If we trust in the Lord, he will provide what we need. It won't always be done in a way that is neat or tidy, and very often it won't be done in the ways that we expect, but if you trust in the Lord, God will take care of you.