THE EUCHARIST AS A SACRAMENT OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE

SUNDAY, SEVENTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP 

2 Kings 4:42-44; Ps 145:10-11,15-18; Eph 4:1-6; Jn 6:1-15

Jesus Christ Our Bread of Life

The readings today direct our attention to the providence of God. St. Paul guides us to the attitude and worldview that will enable us to understand how God provides for all his children in all things in the second reading. The background for this guidance is a Christian mindset. Recall that he started this letter to the Ephesians by thanking God the Father, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heaven through Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world. Hence, these heavenly blessings are available to us in Jesus Christ and through him. The condition for receiving the blessings is faith in the incarnation of the Eternal Word of God. Therefore, the Gospel preached by St. Paul is a vocation to these blessings. One who believes in the promised blessings of Jesus Christ must live as such. This is his emphasis in today’s passage. “I, the prisoner in the Lord, implore you to lead a life worthy of your vocation. Bear with one another charitably, in complete selflessness, gentleness, and patience.” If God has called us to this common heritage of heavenly blessings in Jesus Christ, the hope of obtaining what he promised us ought to make us share what we have now, which is corruptible.

This understanding helps us consider the Christian life here on earth as a preparation for the undying life and blessings that God has promised. We are to practice the possession of all the heavenly blessings here by sharing our earthly blessings, our faith helping us to understand that the same Father who blessed us with all the heavenly blessings in Jesus Christ has also blessed us with our earthly blessings. The same divine hand feeds all of us, who are made into one Body of Jesus Christ, possessing the same Holy Spirit. “Do all you can to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together. There is one Body, one Spirit, just as you were all called into one the same hope when you were called.” The same Father feeds us with the same Word, our spiritual bread, making us into one Body through the same Spirit he gives to all to drink. Faith in God helps us to see the heavenly blessings filtering through our mortal life in his Word and Spirit, which is already ours here in our mortal tent.

The prophet Elisha understood the blessing that the word of God entrusted to him and believed in its potency. His faith in the providence of God made him share his temporal gifts with the people around him, trusting that God will make it sufficient for them. He shared twenty barley loaves and fresh grain in the ear with a hundred men who ate and remained. “‘Give it to the people to eat" he insisted ‘for the Lord says this, “they will eat and have some left over.”’ He served them; they ate and had some left over, as the Lord had said.” The will of the Father is our providence, as the Psalm echoes; “The eyes of all creatures look to you and you give them their food in due time. You open wide your hand, grant the desires of all who live.” In Jesus Christ, the Father has opened wide his hand and granted all our desires, material and spiritual.

This truth is confirmed symbolically in the gospel of today. When Jesus sat by the hillside and saw the crowd coming to him, he had compassion on them and fed them with five barley loaves and two fish. “When they had eaten enough he said to the disciples, ‘Pick up the pieces left over, so that nothing gets wasted.’ So they picked them up, and filled twelve hampers with scraps left over from the meal of five barley loaves.” This action presented Jesus Christ as the Sacrament of the Father’s providence for man. He did this for the people because they came seeking him. The people he fed were doing the will of God by seeking Jesus Christ and listening to his teaching. The Father's will for us is that we should come to his Son to know his holy will. Jesus explained to them later that doing the will of the Father entails believing in the one he sent. Faith in Jesus Christ guarantees our possession of all the heavenly blessings of the Father and enjoyment of God’s providence on earth. So, our Eucharistic celebration symbolises the mystery of the Father's providence to us in Jesus Christ. 

Let us pray: O God, protector of those who hope in you, without whom nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy, bestow in abundance your mercy upon us and grant that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure.