5th Sunday after Pentecost - 5th July 09

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Reading: From the Gospel according to St.Luke9:10-17

Dear and Respected Brethren,

When we read the first two verses of today’s reading we all might get annoyed over the people that followed our Lord, when our Lord had taken the Apostles to a private place. Our Lord might have taken them to a private place for their rest and comfort or for a private talk and a conversation in detail. Any way the people who followed our Lord to Beth-Saida were indeed a hindrance for the plans of our Lord. But the incidents that followed this reveal that their presence was a blessing in disguise, as it caused the glorification of God. When the people spent more time with our Lord, the Apostles only got sympathy for them. They went to their master with a recommendation to send them off to their own places to have their food. Immediately our Lord told them: 1) “You give them to eat”. Food is an unavoidable requirement of all living things and especially for human beings. We could find a number of hungry, poor and down trodden every where we might go around. When we were also self sufficient in the matter of food, we had sympathy and concern for the poor and needy. That is why there is a saying in Malayalam, “Those who have tasted starvation only could identify the ones in starvation.” (Daaridrya dukkamanubhavarkke paaril para klesha vivekamulloo) Our Lenten prayers exhorts us to go after the poor and needy and feed them rather than waiting for them to come and beseech for food. Those who look for their personal fame and popularity, they fail to attend to the needy and poor within their reach. Our Lord is still reminding us and exhorting us to give food to the poor and needy. How many of us could give heed to our Lord God?
2) Our Lord asks to make them sit down in fifties in a company. Why our Lord might have told so? Our Lord wants us to do everything in perfect discipline. In all our parishes there is a precedence of coming in line at the end of the worship to submit our offering and to kiss the hand of the celebrant, before our dispersal from the Church. In very few parishes only our people are keeping perfect discipline. We could notice people making haste and unnecessary rushing and pushing, while waiting to get absolution or to partake the Holy mysteries. Is it not showing our poor indiscipline? Let us try to follow the discipline wherever we are supposed to participate in discipline. Let us imagine that our Lord is visiting our parish on a fine Sunday morning. He is asking our Priest and the altar assistants to make us sit in fifties. And let us imagine how we all will respond to the priest and the altar assistants. We are not behind anyone in celebrating the feasts of Saints and all and to conduct processions in honor of the Saints. Do we keep the discipline all over? Let us try to behave in discipline, wherever we are. Let us decide to give priority to discipline as much as we could.
3) Our Lord blessed the bread and broke them and gave to the Apostles for distribution. How did our Lord bless the five loaves of bread brought there by a young boy? The young boy had submitted the breads he had to the Apostles and they had given to our Lord. This type of deal is there in our prayers also. We handover our needs and supplications to the Saints and they handover the same to our Lord God and finally the blessings we get directly from our Lord God. Let us submit what all we have to our Lord God, who could make them worthy to satisfy so many thousands. In the human understanding, five loaves of bread and two fishes were the food of a boy. When the same reached the hands of our Lord, it became enough and more to feed more than five thousand men, in addition to the ladies and children. If God is asking us the things held by us, what would be our response? We must train ourselves to offer what is held by us, without counting the quantity of what we hold. When our Lord blessed the loaves, they were multiplied in hundred to satisfy fully. These days we could taste any type of food of any nation. But we never get the satisfaction. Unless the food we take in are blessed and sanctified by our Lord God, we will not get any sort satisfaction.

May God bless us all.

Jose Kurian Puliyeril
Kottayam.