Eighteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time
If you live in a family or an institutional setting (like a monastery), there is one thing you don’t want served: leftovers. However, if you live on your own and you cook what you like, leftovers are another thing entirely: an abundance of ever-remixable versions of your favorite food. When I was a pastor, I loved making a big pot of beans and rice on Friday night to be drawn out in different ways throughout the week. In this context, you know that leftovers are the good stuff.
The miracle of the Multiplication of the loaves and fishes is about abundance, a supernatural sign of God’s care that surpasses our expectations. Yet, it is not only that. We see that the five thousand-plus people are satisfied with still some food left over. It is a particular kind of leftover. Fr. Simeon Leiva-Merikakis explains:
The twelve baskets of leftovers will thus consist of ‘fragments’…, eloquent signs of the outpouring of God’s love precisely because they survive in a broken condition. Fragmentariness is here a sign of self-giving through communion. Jesus wants these fragments preserved as a memorial of the superabundance of God’s mercy through him and as a perpetual reminder of the recklessness of love, which satisfies those it loves by giving itself away to be broken, eaten, discarded
We do not think of these broken pieces as being special. We live in a consumerist culture where we easily discard and buy new. We have become utilitarian and lost romance. So, we have become obsessed with efficiency in religion, unwilling to wait or sacrifice, and thus also unable to long for or imagine. Jesus is different, however. Jesus never forgot that His Passion would be the ultimate gift for His Bride, the Church. St. Josemaría Escrivá says that when lovers part, they leave each other souvenirs of different kinds: a symbol, a photo of themselves, even a lock of hair. But Christ is the perfect God and perfect man, and He doesn’t give us a symbol but a reality: He gives us Himself.
In the miracle of the loaves and fishes we see the fourfold prefiguration of our Eucharist, in which food and drink are taken, blessed, broken, and given. It seems so little and yet every particle of it is the fullness of Christ in His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity for us. These are leftovers which transform us. And they are meant to draw us – broken by sin and feeling unworthy to embrace the great Creator – into a truly Holy Communion with God, our lover. The English Catholic author, Caryll Houselander writes: “In Holy Communion, millions of small hosts are given to millions of people; this does not mean that Christ is divided into millions, but that the millions are made one in Christ.”
Reflection Question: What is one small way – some way that most others would not even notice – in which God has shown you particular love or tried to coax you into greater relationship with Him this week? What is one small way that you can begin to become more mindful of God’s Providence from now on?
Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections