A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 9, n. 36)
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – July 31, 2011 **
“The Love of God in Christ Jesus”
BIBLE READINGS
Is 55:1-3 // Rom 8:35, 37-39 // Mt 14:13-21
(N.B. Series 9 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year A from the perspective of the Second Reading. For reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year A based on the Gospel reading, please scroll up to the “ARCHIVES” above and open Series 3. For reflections based on the Old Testament reading, open Series 6.)
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS: A Pastoral Tool for the LECTIO
Today’s liturgy of the Word is deeply inspiring and intensely assuring. In the Old Testament reading (Is 55:1-3), the voice of a hospitable God invites us to a sumptuous banquet where the thirsty, poor and hungry could feast freely and richly. It is an offer of abundant life as well as a call to listen to his word and heed his gracious will.
The Gospel reading (Mt 14:13-21) celebrates the Lord God’s care for his people. The miracle of abundant nourishment through the compassionate act of Jesus Christ makes us experience the power and bounty of divine love. Jesus took control of the situation when the overwhelmed disciples thought it was impossible to feed the hungry crowds. They said, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.” Jesus thus provided a feast for the vast crowds who had followed him on foot from their towns. The disciples who initially wanted Jesus to deny hospitality to the famished crowds became Jesus’ banquet waiters.
Mary Ehle comments: “Following the ritual of a Jewish meal, Jesus blesses, breaks, and gives the bread to the disciples, who in turn gave it to the crowds. Notice how the disciples’ action of giving mirrors Jesus’ own action of giving … The disciples feed the crowds after Jesus performs the Eucharistic action of blessing, breaking, and giving … We still have the food of Jesus’ body and blood with which we will be fed today. But you and those in your assembly share in the vocation of feeding the peoples of the world with Jesus, though in different ways.”
The love of a nurturing God made manifest in Jesus Christ is strongly underlined in today’s Second Reading (Rom 8:35, 37-39). Saint Paul avows that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ and that no creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Indeed, we conquer overwhelmingly all trials and difficulties through him who loves us. Nothing can keep Christ from loving us and no one can impede God from showing his love for us in Christ Jesus.
Harold Buetow comments on today’s Pauline passage, which is one of the most magnificent passages in the Bible: “Here Paul, a true Jew who found conversion to Jesus difficult, enumerates seven different troubles to which human flesh is heir and which may come thick and fast. His initial list of hardships (v. 35) says that the disasters of the world won’t separate a person from Jesus. Indeed, if properly used they bring one closer. Thus we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. Then Paul lists (vv. 38 f.) a series of terrible extremes that will never break our love relationship with Jesus. Death, which is neither the end nor a separation, is really a step closer to the presence of Jesus. Angelic powers, some of them evil, won’t separate us from him, nor will any age in time. At a period when astrology tyrannically ruled many people’s minds, giving rise to superstition, Paul defied it all by declaring that stars at both their zenith and their nadir would be powerless to destroy this relationship. And, looking into the future, he declared that not even another world can take away our being enveloped in the love of God if we don’t let it.”
The following story, “The Old Dented Bucket” circulated through the Internet, affirms that we can mirror divine goodness through our own hospitality and compassionate acts for the needy. It also illustrates that when we allow the love of God in Christ Jesus to dwell in us, no trials or difficulties can ever separate us from that love.
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out-patients at the clinic.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. “Why, he’s hardly taller than my 8-year-old”, I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, “Good evening. I’ve come to see if you’ve a room for just one night. I came for treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there’s no bus ‘til morning.” He told me he’d been hunting for a room since noon with no success; no one seemed to have a room. “I guess it’s my face … I know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments …”
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: “I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning.”
I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us. “No, thank you. I have plenty.” And he held up a brown paper bag.
When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes. It didn’t take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her 5 children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.
He didn’t tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was prefaced with thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going …
At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children’s room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for the bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, “Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won’t put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair.” He paused a moment and then added, “Your children made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.”
I told him he was welcome to come again. And, on his next trip, he arrived a little after 7 in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen! He said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they’d be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. And I wondered what time he had to get up in order to do this for me.
In the years he came to stay overnight with us, there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden. Other times, we received packages in the mail, always a special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk 3 miles to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious.
When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. “Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!”
Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But, oh! if only they had known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear. I know our family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently, I was visiting a friend, who has a greenhouse. As she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, “If this were my plant, I’d put it in the loveliest container I had!”
My friend changed my mind. “I ran short of pots”, she explained, “and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting out in this old pail. It’s just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden.”
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just such a scene in heaven. “Here’s an especially beautiful one”, God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. “He won’t mind starting in this small body.” All this happened long ago – and now, in God’s garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand.
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART: A Pastoral Tool for the MEDITATIO
Do we heed God’s call to the rich banquet of spiritual riches he has prepared for us? Are we ready to participate and celebrate in the heavenly feasting?
Do we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by our poverty and limitations? Or do we rather trust in Jesus who brings about the miracle of superabundance and the feeding of vast hungry crowds?
Do we trust that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ and no creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD: A Pastoral Tool for the ORATIO
Leader: O loving Father,
we thank you for inviting us
to partake in the heavenly feasting
and for the luscious banquet
you have prepared for us in Christ Jesus.
He is both the host and the fare.
He is the bread of the Word
and the bread and wine
of the Eucharistic sacrifice on the cross.
Jesus redeemed, sanctified and glorified us.
The paschal event assures us
that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ
and that no creature will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Strengthened by Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit,
we now overcome all kinds of trials, difficulties and distress
through the love of God in Christ Jesus.
He is our Lord
and he lives and reigns,
forever and ever.
Assembly: Amen.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD: A Pastoral Tool for the CONTEMPLATIO
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“What will separate us from the love of Christ … Which creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus?” (cf. Rom 8:35-39)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION: A Pastoral Tool for the ACTIO
ACTION PLAN: Pray that the bread of God’s living word may be received, read and welcomed by all peoples of the earth. Participate in Lectio Divina sessions in a small Christian community. Endeavor to share the bread of the Lord’s compassion through sacrifice, concrete acts of charity and personal dedication to the poor, the needy and the lonely.
ACTION PLAN: That we may give fitting thanksgiving to the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR: A Weekly Pastoral Tool (Year A, vol. 7, # 36).
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US