Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 28, 2024
Over five Sundays, we will feast from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel and on Jesus’s revelation as the living bread from heaven. Even in this comfort food, there is so much to savor. We can bring out the subtle flavors of these “Bread of Life” passages by relishing them with their paired first readings.
Today, Jesus feeds 5,000 with five loaves and two fish, while the diners at the prophet Elisha’s own miraculous meal numbered only 100. But these people were truly starving. A famine had made their water undrinkable and their land sterile. Twenty barley loaves could not have filled their empty bellies, and yet they all ate with food to spare.
Imagine the faith of this man from Baal-shalisha—a land of pagan gods—to offer what was probably the entirety of his famine-stricken harvest.
Moreover, these twenty loaves were the first fruits, that is, the first yield of that year’s crop given to the priest as a sign of trust that God would provide the people’s needs. Imagine the faith of this man from Baal-shalisha—a land of pagan gods—to offer what was probably the entirety of his famine-stricken harvest. Imagine too how this starving group recognized in one another their shared suffering and refused to hoard the little that was there for their own survival.
If we were that hungry, would we do the same? If the basics of life were gone, could we give the little we had to God and to stranger?
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