A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 4, n. 36)
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B – July 30, 2006
“God’s Abundance”
BIBLE READINGS
2 Kgs 4:42-44 // Eph 4:1-6 // Jn 6:1-15
N.B. This new series of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY presents a biblico-liturgical study of the First Reading of each Sunday Mass to serve as background for a better understanding of the Gospel proclaimed in the liturgy. For a biblico-liturgical study of the Gospel for each Sunday, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US.
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
The Secular Franciscan, Mike McGarvin, the founder of Fresno’s Poverello House, a place where the homeless can get food for body and soul, started his ministry of redeeming lives in the Fresno area with a few loaves of bread. Mike narrates:
It was 1973, just a few months after we had moved back to Fresno. I went to a day-old bread store, loaded up on loaves, got some peanut butter and jelly, and went to work. I took it all back to our trailer, and Mary and I made up a bunch of sandwiches. I got some disposable cups, a jug of ice water, and drove the short distance to Chinatown.
I was working nights, so I had days free, and I started going to Chinatown daily, taking sandwiches and the water, walking and giving them out. People were suspicious at first, but as time went on, they started warming up to me. It helped that I was big, had a black belt in judo, and wasn’t intimidated.
The homeless people I encountered had no place to go. There was a rescue mission in town, but at the time it didn’t have a day program. Most of these folks were typical skid row types – older alcoholics and drug addicts, worn-out prostitutes, and poor, disabled men. They hung out on the streets in the summer heat and the winter cold because there was nowhere to turn. They weren’t wanted by anyone … I had stumbled onto a whole community of outcasts.
That old Poverello spirit was starting to take hold of me again. I loved going out and seeing the smiles on the faces when I handed out sandwiches. I enjoyed the jokes and the stories I’d hear. I liked getting to know people by name, and many of them seemed to crave not only the food, but also the attention.
Indeed, God can multiply the meager resources that we offer to him and together with him feed our hungry brothers and sisters. He can make abundant and copious the little bread that we wish to share with the poor and needy. The story of a small amount of food being able to feed so many, that we hear this Sunday in the Old Testament reading (2 Kgs 4:42-44) and in the Gospel reading (Jn 6:1-15), is heart warming and astounding. The Elisha account of the multiplication of the twenty barley loaves to feed a hundred hungry prophets prepares us to appreciate more deeply the abundance and sacramental significance of the five loaves of barley bread multiplied by Jesus Christ to feed the hungry crowd of five thousand.
Concerning the First Reading, the authors of the Days of the Lord, vol. 5, comment on the implications of the bread of the first fruits generously offered to Elisha by a kind man from Baal-shalishah: “In the biblical tradition, Elisha, who played an important role in the northern kingdom, is presented as a person whose life was marked by many miraculous episodes. The liturgy has chosen the miracle of the multiplied loaves as a counterpart to Jesus’ miracle. The episode itself is most simple. There was a famine in the land (2 Kgs 4:38). A man offers Elisha twenty barley loaves made from the first fruits, and fresh grain in the ear. Elisha has this providential food distributed among his prophet-brethren who are with him, numbering one hundred. Not only is the small quantity of food sufficient for all, but remnants are collected … We are dealing with bread multiplied in order that it might be shared … In the Bible, bread, the gift of God to humans to strengthen them, symbolizes intelligence and wisdom. It is a sign of concluded peace, of life. The barley loaves are those of the bread offering. The gesture of the man who brings to Elisha the first fruits, which earth has given and human hands have made, has a definite liturgical connotation. Finally, the abundance of the bread that will feed the poor has come to suggest, in a later tradition, the banquet of the end times, when at last God himself will liberally satisfy all human needs.”
The abundance in the multiplication of loaves in the Elisha story is surpassed by Jesus’ miraculous action of the feeding of the hungry crowd of about five thousand. The evangelist John tells us that after the meal, Jesus instructed his disciples to gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted. The disciples collected the fragments as instructed and filled “twelve wicker baskets”, a symbol that evokes the Church – “the new twelve tribes of Israel” – the Eucharistic community that continues to celebrate the breaking of the bread and gathers the elect from all corners of the world.
The authors of the Days of the Lord, vol. 5, explain: “As to the remaining pieces – the “fragments – that Jesus orders to be collected so that nothing will be lost, they make us think of the ancient appellation of Eucharist: the fraction of the bread. Finally, Christian tradition has seen the relationship between those pieces carefully gathered and the Eucharistic meal that Christian communities, scattered through time and space, continue to celebrate until the day when Christ will assemble the elect at the heavenly table. The Eucharistic bread, the food that endures for eternal life (Jn 6:27), will never fail in the Church; everyone is abundantly fed with it today, and there will still be plenty of it tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.”
The miracle of the multiplied barley loaves reveals God’s abundant love and the generosity and selflessness that it demands from us and generates in us. The man from Baal-shalishah with twenty barley loaves and some freshly-cut heads of grain and the boy who has five barley loaves and two fish made a total offering of their “little lot”. God received their “little lot” and made it abundant.
The following poem (cf. T.V.N., Loaves and Fishes) expresses the beauty of giving our “little lot” and the miracle of God’s love that transforms our “little lot” into abundance.
Then perhaps the lad said proudly,
“Jesus took my little lot,
blessed and broke my loaves and fishes.
See what everybody’s got!”
Lord, I haven’t much to give you.
But I’ll give you all I’ve got.
You could make it work wonders,
bless and use my little lot.
PERSONAL REFLECTION
“Bread for the World’s Hunger”
By Fr. Mario Giachino SSP
SSP Community, Los Angeles, CA-U.S.A.
Jesus performed a spectacular miracle in giving food to a multitude of hungry and needy people in a deserted place. We are given to understand that such a miracle was a sign of the presence of the Messiah to those who had followed him there.
Although the crowds in general who followed Jesus did not yet have a very deep faith in Him, that particular crowd understood that he did an extraordinary thing for them and they recognized him as: “the prophet who was to come into the world”.
They wanted to make him their king who would resolve their problems once and for all.
They did not understand the full meaning of the miracle that Jesus had performed: that it was a sign of a spiritual Bread: so Jesus tried to explain it to them, drawing from their experience of enjoying abundant earthly bread, and the desire of tasting heavenly Bread that would nourish their soul. But they still did not understand. They simply saw Jesus as one who could give them all the food they needed for their body. Knowing this, Jesus “fled back to the mountain alone”.
When we celebrate the Eucharist we perform the “Breaking of the Bread”, as the early Christians called it. In the “Breaking of the Bread” we receive special grace that inspires us to do works of charity. The miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fishes may well inspire us to perform similar “miracles” to feed the starving of the world. We followers of Christ must understand that we can and should alleviate the poverty of the world by sharing with our less fortunate brothers and sisters the abundant gifts that God has given us.
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
A. What are the various hungers that afflict us personally and as a global community? How do we respond to the hungers of today’s world?
B. How do we trust in the Lord’s promise, “They shall eat and there shall be some left over”? How do the Gospel episodes of the multiplication of the loaves impinge on us and inspire us to trust in the power of Jesus and in divine providence?
C. Do we try to offer to God our “little lot” and trust in God’s power to transform our poverty into riches and abundance?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
(Adapted from Pope John Paul II’s Prayer and from T.V.N., “Loaves and Fishes”)
Leader: We adore you, O wonderful Sacrament of the presence of the One who loved his own “to the end”. We thank you, O Lord, who edifies, gathers together and gives life to the Church. O divine Eucharist, flame of Christ’s love that burns on the altar of the world, make the Church, comforted by you, even more caring in wiping away the tears of suffering and in sustaining the efforts of all who yearn for justice and peace.
Assembly: Lord, I haven’t much to give you.
But I’ll give you all I’ve got.
You could make it work wonders,
bless and use my little lot.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“They shall eat and there shall be some left over.” (2 Kgs 4:43)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
A. ACTION PLAN: Today pray for all those afflicted with various types of hungers – physical, moral and spiritual. Make an effort to alleviate the hungers of the world’s poor and of the needy people in your local community.
B. ACTION PLAN: To help appreciate more deeply the graciousness of God who makes abundant our “little lot” and to thank Jesus for being the Bread of life, 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 (Vol. 2, n. 36): A Weekly Pastoral Tool.
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