17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B<\/a>
\n2 Kings 4:42-44
\nEphesians 4:1-6
\nJohn 6:1-15
\nJuly 29, 2012<\/p>\nOur readings today begin with what we see as a miracle by Elisha.\u00a0 One hundred people are fed with the barley\u00a0brought by the man from the firstfruits of his harvest.\u00a0 What he brings is his tithe but it would not normally be enough to feed one hundred people.\u00a0 But God is able to take what the man has given and multiple it.<\/p>\n
Turning to the gospel, Jesus does something even greater.\u00a0 He feeds five thousand with even less.\u00a0 It is the fourth of seven great signs in John\u2019s Gospel.\u00a0 The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle told in all four gospels.<\/p>\n
Certainly feeding people who are hungry is important and something to be thankful for.\u00a0 It is important to feed the hungry and we should always be mindful of that.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019ve already referred to the feeding as the 4th of 7 great signs in John\u2019s Gospel.\u00a0 The \u201csigns\u201d, the Wedding Feast at Cana, the healing of the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus are all wonderful miracles in and of themselves.\u00a0 But as signs, they serve another person \u2013 to show the people, show us who Jesus truly is by showing the power of God working through Him.<\/p>\n
And it is not small task at that.<\/p>\n
Elisha fed 100 people with the barley.\u00a0 Well, actually Elisha didn\u2019t feed them.\u00a0 God did.\u00a0 But God did it through Elisha to show that Elisha was a true prophet of God.<\/p>\n
But this miracle of Elisha is nothing compared to the Feeding of the 5,000.\u00a0 Jesus is not simply another prophet.\u00a0 He is the Son of God himself and thus his miracles are much greater.<\/p>\n
Actually, the miracle, the power of God symbolized in the Feeding of the 5,000 is not limited to the physical event of the feeding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It leads us into the great gift of the Eucharist.\u00a0 Beginning today, we spend the next five weeks readings from chapter six of John\u2019s Gospel known as the Bread of Life Discourse.\u00a0 Over the next few weeks, we will talk about what the Eucharist means to us as the Body of Blood of Christ.<\/p>\n
For today, I think we need to think about two things.\u00a0 First, we must remember how the man brought the barley loaves as the firstfruits\u00a0of the harvest.\u00a0 He recognized all that he had was\u00a0a gift from God and brought his tithe\/contribution to show his appreciation of the gift.\u00a0 I want to emphasis that the tithe came from the firstfruits, not what was left over.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Secondly, we need to mention the theme of \u201cunity\u201d from the second reading.\u00a0 As Christians, we are not just a bunch of separate individuals.\u00a0 We are united through baptism as children of God.\u00a0 We believe in one faith and become one body in Christ.<\/p>\n
As Christian stewards, we are given many gifts from God.\u00a0 We have \u201cstuff\u201d because of hard work but ultimately everything we have flows from the gifts God has given us.<\/p>\n
If we appreciate what God has given us, we are called to use the gifts to help one another.\u00a0 This means to use our time, talent, and treasure as we are called and able to help one another.<\/p>\n
The man with the barley loaves showed his appreciation for what God had given him by given the firstfruits and not just what was left over.<\/p>\n
How do you show your appreciation for what God has given you in accord with your means?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our Sunday gospels right now come from Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John.\u00a0 For those new to my blog I don’t often put my homilies on this blog because my homily constantly develops over the week and I don’t keep the written text updated.\u00a0 We read from this chapter for five weeks so here …<\/p>\n
Continue reading ‘Homily for Sunday, July 29, 2012’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[104,82],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-cF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":792,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions\/792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}