With Grateful Hearts

Fleeing from life situations that are unsettling and frustrating is a very natural human tendency. For example, when faced with an overwhelming relationship or professional setbacks, our natural reaction is often to escape from those people or situations. This is what we see in the disciples’ response in today’s Gospel: the crowd was huge, it was getting late, and they were in a deserted place; the apostles did not want to shoulder the burden of finding food for all those people. That is why they suggest to Jesus that He dismiss the crowd and let them find their own food.

This seems like a very normal reaction to us, for the disciples represent us. They think and act just as we do. But Jesus sees the crowd and perceives the needs of the hungry; at the same time, He clearly invites His disciples—and us—to lift our gaze beyond our own small world and interests, to become aware of the reality so many of our brothers and sisters are living: hunger, misery, despair, and violence. This is not the world God wanted, nor is it the world He wants now.

Jesus has seen humanity’s hunger—not just hunger for physical food, but for everything necessary to live fully as human beings. A life is not fully human for the sick, the lonely, the abandoned, or those lacking affection; nor for those suffering injustice, lacking a home or a job, or unable to start a family. So, how do we respond to all these forms of hunger so that humanity may be satisfied?

That is why the disciples suggest to Jesus: “This is beyond our means. Ask them to leave and buy their own food.” Sending them away would seem like the safest option. That way, we wouldn’t have to worry about where they would find food, at what price, or whether anyone would be unable to afford it. Nor would we have to fret about some buying extra to hoard supplies for the future, leaving others without food…

Dear brothers and sisters, material goods are a temptation. Our instinct drives us to claim them as our own, to accumulate them, to keep them for ourselves or, at most, to share them with our family members. Yet, even within the family, divisions and disagreements arise when money is involved.

The miracle recounted in this Sunday’s Gospel—the multiplication of the loaves to feed five thousand people—teaches us a very simple truth: the wealth or treasures we hold in our hands do not belong to us. Everything belongs to God, and we are stewards of goods that are not our own.