17th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B - Jesus Feeds the 5,000 & “Come to the Feast”
Friends, this weekend’s liturgy brings together several strands of Old Testament expectations to reveal Jesus as Israel’s promised Messiah and King, the Lord who comes to feed his people. Notice the parallels between this weekend’s Gospel and First Reading. Both Elisha and Jesus face a crowd of hungry people with only a few “barley” loaves. We hear similar words about how impossible it will be to feed the crowd with so little. And in both, the miraculous multiplication of bread satisfies the hungry and leaves food left over.
The Elisha story (2 Kgs. 4:42-44) looks back to Moses, the prophet who fed God’s people in the wilderness. Moses prophesied that God would send a prophet like him. The crowd in today’s Gospel (Lk. 7:16), witnessing his miracle, identifies Jesus as that prophet. The Gospel shows Jesus to be the Lord, the Good Shepherd, who makes his people lie down on green grass and spreads a table before them. The miraculous feeding is a sign that God has begun to fulfill his promise, which we sing of in today’s Psalm (Ps. 145) —to give his people food in due season and satisfy their desire.
But Jesus points to the final fulfillment of that promise in the Eucharist. He does the same things he does at the Last Supper— he takes the loaves, pronounces a blessing of thanksgiving and gives the bread to the people. Notice, too, that twelve baskets of bread are left over, one for each of the Apostles. These are signs that should point us to the Eucharist — in which the Church, founded on the Apostles, continues to feed us with the living bread of his Body. In this Eucharistic banquet, we are made one Body with the Lord, as we hear in today’s Epistle (Eph. 4:1-6). Let us resolve again, then, to live lives worthy of such a great calling.
In honor of these readings, we present our latest video "Come to the Feast”, a lively Eucharistic song written by Roman Catholic liturgical musician Bob Hurd, Salvadorian Spanish-speaking liturgical musician Jamie Cortez, and Pia Moriarty, that may be used for gathering or during preparation.
Video can be watched by clicking here or on the picture below:
