Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time /
Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
The Second Book of Kings is the source of this weekend’s first biblical reading. The two books of Kings originally were one volume. At one point in the development of the Bible, they were divided into two books.
These two books are historical, but their purpose was religious. They attempted to look through the reigns of the Hebrew kings to record and to assess the fidelity of the nation to God. Prophets, therefore, have a prominent role in Kings.
This weekend’s reading does not even mention a king. Instead, it recalls the life of the prophet Elisha. As an act of faith in and homage to God, a devout man brought 20 barley loaves, the first fruits of the harvest, to Elisha as a gift to God.
Elisha accepted the offering, but told the man to distribute the loaves among the people, who numbered 100. The man was willing to oblige, but he naturally doubted that 20 loaves would suffice for so many people. Nevertheless, the man complied.
Rather than being insufficient, the loaves were plentiful enough to satisfy the crowd.
For its second reading, the Church this weekend presents a passage from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.
This epistle was directed to the Christian community of Ephesus, a major city in the Roman Empire in the first century and an important port on the Mediterranean Sea in present-day Turkey.
Crowning the city was a magnificent temple of Diana, a pagan goddess. Throngs came as pilgrims to the great shrine. So the Ephesian Christians lived in a very important pagan religious center.
Understandably, Paul called upon these Christians to be strong in faith, and not to yield to the temptations most certainly proceeding from this context of the city.
St. John’s Gospel furnishes the last reading. In this passage, Jesus encounters a crowd on the shore of the Sea of Galilee near the ancient and still thriving city of Tiberias. The Gospel notes that Passover was near.
The crowd was hungry. Philip, an Apostle, approached Jesus with this fact. The Lord ordered that food be found. Another Apostle, Andrew, noticed that a boy had five barley loaves and a few fish. Jesus instructed the Apostles to distribute these loaves and fishes among the crowd, numbered as 5,000.
Before this distribution, the Lord blessed this food.
The five loaves and few fishes satisfied the multitude. Indeed, after all had had their full, an abundance remained.
Reflection
The Church reassures us this weekend that God is never distant from us unless, of course, we distance ourselves from God by our own selfishness and sin. God is with us yet today in Jesus, the risen Lord.
So we humans are not totally helpless. A man brought Elisha 20 loaves. A boy produced the food for Andrew in the reading from John. Yet, in neither case, were these human provisions enough. God, however, entered the story in each case.
The connection with the Apostles and their role in salvation is clear. The Apostles, through the Church, still bear our concerns to Jesus. By the same token, they still convey to us all the blessings of the Lord.
There are many links between this event recounted by John and the Eucharist. First, bread is food, vital for life. Second, the meeting of the people on the shore in this story from John was near Passover. The Eucharist is the great Passover meal.
Next, Jesus gave thanks, the same gesture that occurs in all the accounts of the Last Supper.
Finally, all partook in the Lord’s gift of this food. All were satisfied. The fact that much was left over reveals to us the lavishness of God’s love and mercy. †