MIRACLE OF GENEROSITY
Eighteenth Sunday of the Year A – August 2, 2020
First Reading: Is 55: 1-3. An invitation is addressed to the exiles in Babylon to come to a banquet of friendship and love that God wants to share with his people.
Second Reading: Rom 8: 35. 37-39. No matter how hard and bad times we may have to go through, we remain steadfast, because we are certain of the love of Christ.
Gospel: Mt 14: 13-21. The compassion of Jesus toward the people is overwhelming. He heals the sick and feed the hungry.
Homily
I have two favourite contemporary Saints I admire and try to imitate. These are Saint John Paul II and Saint Theresa of Calcutta (Mother Theresa). These two saints are for me the embodiment of the miracle of generosity Jesus speaks about in today’s Gospel. In her ministry, once Mother Theresa came across a Hindu family that did not eat for days. She took some rice and gave it to the family. What happened next surprised her.
Without wasting time, the Hindu mother divided the rice into two. She took one half of it and gave it to the family next door, which happened to be a muslim family. Mother Theresa was surprised seeing the generosity of the Hindu mother and asked if the rice wasn’t enough for one family. But the woman replied that the family neighbour hadn’t eaten for days either.
The miracle of the loaves and fishes could be called a miracle of generosity. We see first the generosity of the boy, who, with his gift of five loaves of bread and two fish, made the miracle possible. It was a little gift but for the boy, it was all that he had. It is easy to give something that we won’t really miss. But when the gift is as desperately needed by the giver as by the receiver, that is true giving, that’s sacrifice. This is the first miracle of generosity we see in today’s Gospel.
Then there was the marvelous generosity of Jesus. To really understand and appreciate Jesus’ generosity, we need to consider the circumstances of the miracle. It is easy to reach out to others when everything is fine but not so easy when we are having personal issues to deal with. So it was with Jesus. He just learned about the murder of his cousin, John the Baptist. He needed peace and quiet to recollect himself. That’s why he and the apostles crossed to the far side of the lake. But as soon as he stepped outside of the lake, he saw a crowd of people waiting for him. He could have sent them away. Instead he had compassion on them and gave himself to them. He even went far with his generosity. He fed them all to the point that, there was enough leftover, twelve full baskets left over. This is truly a miracle of generosity.
Generosity is always about giving things. But it is also about giving of yourself, of your time, your gifts and talents. Giving things can be so easy but giving of yourself is not easy. Jesus teaches us how to give things to others and above all how to give of yourself to others. Jesus nourishes us of his word, body and blood at the Eucharist. In the Eucharist we taste the love of God which Saint Paul talks about in the second reading. As we experience that love in the Eucharist, we need to share that love with others.
