Sunday the 2nd of August 2026 - The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Isaiah 55:1-3/ Ps 145(144)/ Romans 8:35, 37-39/ Matthew 14:13-21

In the Gospel today we find the disciples responding to Jesus that they do not have enough to comply with his request to feed the large crowd. They point out that they cannot possibly feed so many people with just five loaves of bread and two fish. The message for them and for us is that God never asks us for what we do not have, He asks for what we do have, however small and insignificant we think that might be. If we hand over the little we have to God He will multiply it many times. Through His blessing and breaking of the gifts we bring we will be able to distribute His love to the world around us. This is the note of joy running through the readings today, the joy of people who have discovered that God is not mean and tight fisted but generous and openhanded.

In the first reading Isaiah stood in the marketplace and called the people to come and buy grain without money, buy wine and milk, come and eat without cost or price. Why spend our hard-earned wages on what is not bread and things that fail to satisfy? We are encouraged to buy things that promise satisfaction but can never deliver it, and all the while the banquet God has prepared is free. In the Gospel the message of Isaiah is made real by Jesus on the hillside. Jesus has just heard that John the Baptist had been beheaded at a drunken party, and he wants to go to a quiet place and be alone. But the crowds followed Him hungry for his word. Jesus was moved with compassion for their needs. Although tired and grieving Jesus set aside his own sorrow because he saw people who needed him. This is the Jesus we find when we come to the altar at Mass.

After three days out in the wilderness the disciples asked Jesus to send the crowd away to buy food for themselves. It seems to be a perfectly reasonable idea when considering the need of the people and the apparent inability the disciples had to provide for them with what they had. Jesus was not of that mind and challenged the disciples to feed the crowd themselves. With only fives loaves of bread and two fish the disciples could not see how with so little they could feed so many. It is when there is so little, but offered into the hands of Jesus, that the miracle of the multiplication is accomplished. When it came the miracle not only fed the crowd but provided twelve baskets of leftovers. Jesus did not give just enough he gave them an abundance far exceeding their needs and expectation. God's willingness to give us what we need knows no limitation. The psalm sings of this generosity, God opens his hand to satisfy the desire of every living thing.

The miracle of the feeding of the crowd foretells what we receive from the altar at Mass. Jesus took the loaves, said the blessing, broke them, and gave them to the disciples. Took, blessed, broke, gave. Those are the words of the Last Supper, the words and actions of the priest at Mass. The multiplication of the loaves prefigures the superabundance of the bread of the Eucharist. The hunger of that crowd is our hunger, and the compassion that moved the heart of Jesus then moves it now. We come to Mass because we cannot live on what the world sells us, and here what we need is given away free, without money, without price.

There is a further foreshadowing of the Eucharist in this gospel passage. Jesus blessed and broke the bread, but He did not hand it to the crowd himself, He gave it to the disciples, and the disciples fed the people. Jesus chose to put the loaves into the hands of His disciples to teach them, to make them partners in His act of love, compassion, and mercy. It is the same today at Mass. Jesus consecrates through the hands of his priest, and the Bread of Life is placed into our hands, and we are sent out of the building carrying the Body of Christ within us into a world that is starving. Not starving for bread only, but for love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, for someone who will not dismiss them.

Do we take up this mission?  Do we answer as the disciples did saying how little we have? We are tired, grieving, stretched thinly, do we send the crowds off to fend for themselves? Jesus knows how we feel and what we have but he tells us to bring what little we have to Him. Five loaves, two fish, thirty minutes. one phone call, an apology, a moment of patience. Place it in the hands of Jesus, let him bless it and break it, and it will feed more people than we will ever know.

Saint Paul, in the second reading, gives us the encouragement we need by telling us that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is the message from every crucifix, God does not give up on us, nothing we have done, nothing done to us, nothing we fear can cut us off from that abundant love. We are not commissioned to distribute a love we hope we might have. We are commissioned to distribute a love that has already been poured out on us in overwhelming abundance, with twelve baskets left over.

At Mass we bring the meagre gifts we offer, gifts that God takes and multiplies beyond our understanding, so that we can go out glorifying the Lord by our lives, feeding those who are hungry not only for food, but for God's love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. What we receive in wonder from God at the altar we must take out into the world to feed his people.

God Bless Brendan