Eighteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time
The Hungry Are Fed, You Give Them to Eat
Liturgical Cycle: A | Lectionary Cycle: II
Introduction
Greeting (See First Reading)
The Lord invites us:
Listen to me
and you will have good things to eat
and rich food to enjoy.
May the Lord nourish you with his body
and may he always be with you. R/ And also with you.
Introduction by the Celebrant
1. The Hungry Are Fed
In every Eucharistic celebration, Jesus invites us to eat and drink with him. We are the people not only at the Last Supper but also at the multiplication of bread. We were and are present there. He does not want us to remain hungry for we can find in him all that is good and valuable. He gives us himself, and he is asking us to do the same: give the people food to eat, give them yourselves. We ask the Lord to help us do this.
2. You Give Them to Eat
The media remind us almost daily of the hunger for food in many parts of the world. There is also much spiritual hunger, hunger and thirst for values, for something to hold on to and to hope for. Jesus gave to the people the food of compassion, his word of forgiveness, and especially the food of himself, of his body. He invites us, his disciples today, to give ourselves away as the food and drink of others. We ask for the courage to do so during this Eucharist.
Penitential Act
How grateful have we been to Jesus
for giving himself to us?
How much have we given ourselves to others?
Let us examine ourselves before the Lord.
(pause)
Lord Jesus, you are the bread
that gives life to the world:
Lord, have mercy. R/ Lord, have mercy.
Jesus Christ, you are the bread
that strengthens us on the journey of life:
Christ, have mercy. R/ Christ, have mercy.
Lord Jesus, you are the bread
that gives us everlasting life:
Lord, have mercy. R/ Lord, have mercy.
In your kindness, forgive us, Lord.
Sustain us on our journey
and lead us to everlasting life. R/ Amen.
Opening Prayer
Let us pray that we may learn from Christ
to feed the hungry
(pause)
God, our compassionate Father,
you let your Son Jesus Christ
give food to all who were hungry in any way.
Make us compassionate for all the poor of our day.
Teach us to see their needs,
to suffer with them, to share their anguish,
to bind their wounds and to appease their hungers.
Give us the strength to do all this
by the power of the food of himself
which Jesus gives us in each Eucharist.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. R/ Amen.
First Reading
Come, Listen, Eat and Drink: In a time of need, God encourages his people through the prophet. To those who hunger and thirst for him and listen to him, everything will be given in abundance.
Covenant of the Lord
Come here, all you who are thirsty, come to the water! All who have no money, come! Yes, buy and drink wine and milk without money and at no cost.
Why spend money on what is not food and labor for what does not satisfy? Listen to me, and you will eat well and enjoy the richest of fare.
Incline your ear and come to me; listen, your soul may live. I will make with you an everlasting Covenant, I will fulfill in you my promises to David.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (cf. 16) The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.
R. The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
The eyes of all look hopefully to you,
and you give them their food in due season;
you open your hand
and satisfy the desire of every living thing.
R. The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
The LORD is just in all his ways
and holy in all his works.
The LORD is near to all who call upon him,
to all who call upon him in truth.
R. The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.
Second Reading
Nothing Can Separate Us from the Love of Christ: In times of need and difficulty, Christians should keep trusting in God. Our faith assures us that God will never abandon us, for he has shown us how much he loves us by giving us his Son, Jesus.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Will it be trials, or anguish, persecution, or hunger, lack of clothing, or dangers, or the sword?
No, through all of this, we are more than conquerors, thanks to him who loved us.
I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor spiritual powers, neither the present nor the future, nor cosmic powers—
whether from heaven or the depths below—nor any creature whatsoever will separate us from the love of God, which we have in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Alleluia Verse
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
They all ate and Were Satisfied: In terms close to those of the institution of the Eucharist, the evangelist tells how Jesus gave food to the hungry people and they could eat until they were satisfied. The disciples distributed the food.
Feeding the Five Thousand
When Jesus heard about it, he took a boat to go to a quiet place to be alone. But the people found out and followed him on foot from their towns.
When Jesus went ashore, he saw the crowd gathered there and had compassion on them. He also healed the sick.
Late in the afternoon, his disciples approached him and said:
“We are in a lonely place, and it is now late. You should send these people away so they can go to the villages and buy something to eat for themselves.”
But Jesus replied:
“They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat.”
They replied:
“We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”
Jesus said to them:
“Bring them here to me.”
Then he made everyone sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and the two fishes, looked up to heaven, gave thanks, broke the loaves, and handed them to the disciples to distribute to the people.
And they all ate, and everyone had enough; then the disciples gathered the leftovers, filling twelve baskets.
About five thousand men had eaten there, along with women and children.
Prayers of the Faithful
When the people that followed him were hungry, the heart of Jesus was filled with pity. Let us bring before him all the cares and hungers of our brothers and sisters in need, and let us say: R/ Lord, satisfy our hunger.
– For the pope, bishops and priests, that they may satisfy the people’s hunger for love and justice, truth and hope by proclaiming without compromise the Lord’s message of Good News, let us pray: R/ Lord, satisfy our hunger.
– For the Church, the body of Christ, that it may help people everywhere to discover and express their deepest aspirations and enrich them with the higher values of the Gospel, let us pray: R/ Lord, satisfy our hunger.
– For the political leaders of the world, for scientists and economists, that they may cooperate unselfishly to solve the problem of hunger in the world and bring to a hungry world not only food but also dignity, justice and peace, let us pray: R/ Lord, satisfy our hunger.
– For the sick and the lonely, for the handicapped and those who are discouraged, for those who hunger for love and acceptance, that our love and concern may be signs to them that God does not abandon them, let us pray: R/ Lord, satisfy our hunger.
– For all of us here, that we may busy ourselves not only with the immediate needs of ourselves and our families, but keep hungering for the higher goods of God’s Word and for the Eucharist, let us pray: R/ Lord, satisfy our hunger.
Lord Jesus Christ, let no trial or worry separate us from the love of the Father in heaven, which has come to us through you, our Lord, forever and ever. R/ Amen.
Prayer over the Gifts
God our Father,
we give you thanks for bread and wine
and for making them the signs
of your Son’s presence in our midst.
Through him we bring before you
the miseries and aspirations of all.
Let him multiply here for us
the bread of life to make us strong
and the wine of joy to give us hope.
We ask you this through Christ our Lord. R/ Amen.
Introduction to the Eucharistic Prayer
What Jesus did for the hungry crowd he does again for us here and now: he gives us something to eat, and it is himself he gives. Let us thank the Father with Jesus.
Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer
Let us pray to God our Father
for the food we need every day,
also for the food of the Eucharist. R/ Our Father...
Breaking of the Bread
As the rite of the breaking of bread is almost unnoticed—it takes place normally during the Agnus Dei—and is yet very meaningful, it may be good to call attention to it once in a while after the prayer for peace, with words like these, while holding up the host and then breaking it:
We break this bread of Jesus Christ
as a sign that he himself was broken
to give us his life.
Let this breaking also be a sign
that each of us is willing
to share one’s food and life with others
and to live together in peace with all.
The peace of the Lord be with you always. R/ And also with you.
Invitation to Communion
This is the body of Christ,
the Lamb of God
and the bread which the Father gives us.
Happy are we to be invited to the table
which the Lord has prepared for us. R/ Lord, I am not worthy...
Prayer after Communion
Our God and Father,
through the bread of life
of your Son Jesus Christ,
multiply in us our capacity to love.
Give us the courage to put into practice
the words spoken to us by your Son:
“You yourselves give the people to eat.”
Help us to share our food with them
and also our joy and our compassion,
our hopes and our love.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord. R/ Amen.
Blessing
When we come together
and receive our Lord in the Eucharist,
he is here for us not merely to console us
and to make us strong for our Christian living.
He also challenges us to do as he did:
to share our food with the hungry
and to give ourselves to one another.
May the Lord give you this strength and bless you:
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. R/ Amen.
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord
in one another. R/ Thanks be to God.
REFLECTIONS
Matthew 14: 13-21
To run away from disturbing and frustrating life situations is a natural human tendency. When faced with a burdensome relationship, setbacks in professional life, our natural reaction would be to run away from them. This is what we find in the response of the disciples in today's gospel: That the crowd was too large and, time was too late and they were in a deserted place – they did not want to take up the burden of finding food for all those people. So, they suggest to Jesus: Dismiss the crowds and let them find food for themselves.
It looks quite normal to us, because the disciples are our representatives, who think and behave like us. While explaining the passage in the Gospel according to John, Fr. Armellini said, Jesus sees the multitude, he sees the needs of the hungry; and he gives a clear invitation to his disciples as well to look up from our little world, from our interests, and become aware of the reality in which so many of our brothers and sisters who live in hunger, in misery, who are desperate, and suffer violence. This is not the world that God wanted.
Jesus has seen the hunger of humanity; hungry not only of food, but of all the needs that must be satisfied to be fully human. The life of the sick person is not fully human, neither is the life of the lonely, the abandoned, the one who lacks affection, the one who faces injustice, the one who has no home, no job, the one who cannot form a family. How to respond to all these forms of hunger so that humanity be satiated?
That’s why the disciples suggest to Jesus: It is beyond our capabilities to handle. Ask these people to go away and buy their own food. Sending them away would be our safest option, so that we don’t have to worry about where would they find food, at what price, would there be someone who could not afford to buy; would there be people who would buy more and store up their tomorrows and thus there be no more food for others to buy…
Material goods are a temptation; our instinct tells us to take possession of them, to accumulate them, to keep them for ourselves, at most to share them with our family members, but then, even in the family, when it comes to money, divisions and disagreements begin. The first letter to Timothy says that the greed of money is the root of all the evils in the world.
Today's miracle of feeding the 5000 teaches us one simple truth: The wealth or treasures that we have in our hands do not belong to us. Everything belongs to God, and we are administering goods that are not ours.