17th Sunday in Ordinary Time B (28 July 2024)

1. We are called to build unity: but how? Already last Sunday the Apostle Paul in the second reading from the letter to the Ephesians (Eph 2:13-18) mentioned the problems that disturbed the peace of the community of Ephesus, due to the discord that arose especially between Jews and pagan converts. Imprisoned in Rome, he is well aware that diatribes arise everywhere and there are risks of heresy, so his concern is to reiterate the need for Christian unity both in behaviour and doctrine. He reminds them that there is 'one body and one spirit... one hope... one Lord, one faith, one baptism... one God and Father of all'.  Seven times he repeats 'one', and at the end of the chain, made up of seven links, there is the heavenly Father above all, who uses each one to bring his love to all. Well aware of human frailty, St Paul affirms that unity is the work, indeed the gift of God, and is the 'loving design of the will of God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ' with which he chose us before the creation of the world, as the liturgy made us meditate in the second reading of the Mass two Sundays ago (Eph 1:1-13). Gift and plan of salvation that will be fully realised when "all things, those in heaven and those on earth, are brought back to Christ the One Head" in the fullness of time. We are asked to contribute by "supporting and bearing one another in love". Unity is therefore God's gift and man's way of trying to activate this gift. But how? Jesus pointed this out to the apostles at the Last Supper when he insisted on the urgency of "abiding" with him and in him seven times, which in biblical language means "always".  Only united with Jesus can we contribute to "building up the body of Christ". By immersing ourselves in Christ we will be able to strive "all to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to the perfect man, to the fullness of Christ" (Eph 4:13). And the whole of humanity will become one body with Jesus: "the total body of Christ".  With baptism we have accepted the invitation to work in this building site that is the world, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The word Church (in Greek ecclesia) has in its root the meaning of 'call': with baptism we are called to follow Jesus, 'meek and humble of heart', who will carry out the heavenly Father's plan with our cooperation if we allow ourselves to be transformed by his Spirit. To the apostles in the Upper Room he recommended: "By this all will know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another" (Jn13:35). God alone can make us capable of loving and loving one another, which is impossible in our own strength. The apostle's invitation is to live in humility, meekness and patience, so that others may recognise that God exists and it is he who does everything in us. The best of life will then appear, which is the free intervention of God the Trinity "koinonia-communion of love" that enables us "to preserve the unity of the spirit, through the bond of Peace". And therein lies our fulfilment.

2. As the Bible teaches, the believer is one who lives entirely and always from the perspective of the gift, existence itself being enveloped in the mystery of the gift and its miracles. It is in this light that we read today the first reading, taken from the second Book of Kings, the responsorial psalm: "You open your hand, Lord, and satisfy the desire of every man" (Psalm 144/145), the second reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, and the Gospel of John, which is the beginning of chapter six, loaded with messages related to the mystery of the Eucharist, defined as "the Miracle that is Gift" par excellence. St John does not speak, like the other evangelists, of the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper; instead, he recounts the washing of the feet, conveying to us the secret of evangelical love. However, he prepares us for the Eucharist with Chapter VI, which we begin meditating on today and will continue for five Sundays. Internalising a text of St John always asks us to let ourselves be attracted by symbols that are not easy to understand at first sight and that always say more than we can comprehend. Jesus has chosen his disciples and has already performed miracles, attracting the favour of the crowd that follows him. Having crossed the Lake of Tiberias, we read in today's gospel, he passes to the other shore of Galilee, his homeland where he was not well received by his own and it is precisely in this context that he performs one of the six miracles that the fourth gospel always refers to as 'signs'. It is the multiplication of the loaves that all the evangelists report, but St John emphasises its historical context, which is the preparation for the coming Easter. Jesus goes up the mountain (as there are no mountains in the area one understands that this takes on a symbolic tone: he is about to authoritatively accomplish something very high and important). He realises that the people are hungry and it is he, the Lord, who takes the initiative to feed them. But how? There is no bread, there is no money and the crowd is large - the apostles reply, only one little boy has five barley loaves and two fish with him. And from this small gift of a stranger comes the miracle that will provide loaves of bread to eat for five thousand men, leaving as many as 12 bags of bread enough to feed many more. It all stems from the gift of a young man who could never have thought that his few loaves would satisfy so many people.  But therein lies the miracle of the gift, where the little enriches all. Also in the first reading, a story is told of a fellow who offers 20 barley loaves to the prophet Elisha, and he does not take them for himself, but asks for them to be given to the people "for the Lord says: They shall eat of them, and they shall bring forth. And so it came to pass: twenty loaves offered and a hundred men fed, here too the disproportion between the means employed and the result obtained is evident. Once again the miracle of the gift returns. And that is not all.

3. The reaction of the crowd after the multiplication of the loaves: "This is truly the prophet, the one who is coming into the world" suggests that the expectation of the Messiah was strong and the effervescence appeared more marked because they were preparing for Easter, the feast-memorial of the liberation from slavery from Egypt and prefiguring the total liberation that the Messiah would bring to the people of Israel. The fact that St John specifies that it was close to Easter, "the feast of the Jews" is an indispensable element in understanding this miracle/sign. In the coming Sundays, we will continue reading this chapter and better understand how much the paschal mystery is present in the long discourse that Jesus gives on the bread of life. For now, he leads the people who follow him to the "mountain", and the thought immediately goes to the messianic banquet that the prophet Isaiah had prophesied to console the enslaved people: the Lord will give a feast on this mountain for all peoples, a feast full of fat and succulent meat and fine wine (Cf. Is 25:6). To the hungry crowd awaiting the Messiah Jesus offers the sign that the long-awaited day has come: he is the Messiah. He is the one who takes the initiative to test the apostles to arouse faith in them. Philip did not immediately realise that Jesus was testing his faith and responds in a way that is understandable from a human point of view, namely by saying that even two hundred denarii of bread is not enough to give a piece to everyone present, and the Apostle Andrew points out the presence of a little boy with five loaves and two fish, but what can one do with that?  It is common sense that we would all have reacted with, but Jesus with his gestures provokes us to trust him. In the first reading, Elisha shows that he is a prophet rich in faith and Jesus amazes the apostles by asking them to sit down. Trust in God always: this is the message that comes to each of us in whatever situation we find ourselves, especially if we are suffering in life, because the specification that "there was much grass in that place is a clear reference to Jesus the good shepherd, who, by feeding the crowd, cares for all the sheep, for each one of us.  John, however, changes tone at this point and writes that Jesus took the loaves and after giving thanks gave them to the crowd.  It is easy to glimpse in the miracle and in Jesus' words a foretaste of the banquet of the Eucharist, prepared for all at the Last Supper: here is the gift of gifts! His body and blood, the true bread of life. 

+ Giovanni D'Ercole Happy Sunday.