17th Sunday Year B - Homily 4

 Homily 4 - 2015

John’s Gospel sees today’s story as a sign, as pointing to something otherwise beyond our comprehension. John wants to draw us more deeply into the mystery that is Jesus. I think that the story is making a similar point to the parable of the one hundred-fold harvest. God is a God of enough, indeed, of extraordinary abundance; and Jesus is the human revelation of that God.  Over the next two Sundays we shall hear of Jesus as the Bread of Life, of nourishing life, of eternal life now, and of future resurrection.

This is the one story told by all four evangelists. And they all add the seemingly superfluous comment that they picked up the pieces left over, and filled twelve baskets with the scraps. What is that about? I wonder if that was what Pope Francis was writing about in his recent Encyclical on Care for our Common Home. As he spoke of the ways that we humans fail to respect our world and its environment, he wrote, we know that approximately a third of all food produced is discarded, and “whenever food is thrown out it is as if it were stolen from the table of the poor”.

Pope Francis connects very closely issues to do with lack of care for our world with the equally scandalous lack of care for the poor. If we who live in the developed world followed the demands of justice, without exploiting, damaging or wasting the world’s natural resources, and if we approached others as fellow creatures of our benevolent God and brothers and sisters of each other with equal rights to the world’s bounty, there would be enough to feed everyone and to assure an adequate standard of living.

Powerful voices in the developed and developing worlds call for strict measures of population control, especially in the world’s poorest nations, and specifically in Africa. I was reading an interesting comment the other day that went like this, There are many ways that we could start reducing our numbers. Some of them, such as forced sterilization or abortion, are immoral. Some are unjust, such as mandatory birth control measures inflicted by the wealthy against the poor of the Earth. But there are methods that would achieve a reduction of human numbers and provide a better environment for all while respecting human dignity. Educating women and liberating the most dismally poor from their plight are two of the most effective methods of population control.

Pope Francis admits the number and complexity of issues contributing to our present despoliation of our world. Political and economic reforms, while necessary, will not be enough, in fact, will hardly be considered, without what he calls a human and ecological conversion. It is fascinating to notice the number of TV programs devoted to the latest recipes, while at the same time the Western world is trying to cope with an epidemic of obesity. Why are we so obsessed with eating and drinking?

The issue is one of justice, given that so many of the world’s population are in fact starving. As disciples of Jesus we cannot but be concerned.  Individual persons must convert. But realistically, individuals are not likely to convert without an accompanying conversion of the culture as well.

Over the next couple of weeks the Gospel will insist that Jesus is the true Bread of Life, the one who can truly fill the cultural and personal emptiness that we in the West are seeking to fill with everything else but the sense of meaning and fulness of life that he has to offer. How might we come to realise that? Pope Francis in his Encyclical goes so far as to suggest, Christian spirituality … encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption.

Contemplative lifestyle… Are we up to it?