Compassion and Generosity

07-25-2021Weekly ReflectionFr. Arul Doss

Dear people of God,

Good morning to you all. I am very happy to see many new faces in our weekend Mases. You are most welcome. May our mighty God bless us all with all the blessings that we need including peace and protection. On this seventeenth Sunday, we celebrate Christ the new Elisha who feeds, and unites us in him.

Our first reading from the second book of Kings foreshadows the multiplication of the loaves and fish in our Gospel today. The servant brings to the king, Elisha, twenty barley loaves from the first fruits of the harvest and fresh grain. Elisha gave strict commands to give it to the people to eat. The servant questioned, “how can I set this before a hundred people?” Yet Elisha stated that the Lord said, “They shall eat and there shall be some left over.” And we hear that it was true, people ate and still, there was food left over. Likewise, in our Gospel Jesus asked the apostles how they were going to feed the crowd that had been following them. Philip replied that not even 200 days’ worth of wages would be enough for the number of people. All they had were five barley loaves and two fish from a little boy. Yet Jesus multiplied the food so that there were baskets left over. All ate and were satisfied.

I would like to say two important lessons that we can learn from today’s miracles. The first is from the compassion and generosity of both Elisha and Jesus for their flocks. Compassion moved them to generously feed their people. Compassion is the basis of empathy and sympathy. We need it to understand what it means for others to be hungry, thirsty, sick, homeless, jobless, and lonely. In fact, we need them to be human.

The second lesson is the generosity of the little boy and the servant. The servant gave the very best of what he had, and the boy gave all that he had, then God did the rest. He generously offered what he had and is generosity became the motivation of a great miracle for his community. From two fish and five loves, the community was blessed with more twelve baskets of food. This shows that at times, God works with what we have. To be compassionate is to be like Christ. To be generous is to cooperate with Christ in his ministry. Christ sought the cooperation of his disciples and community, and the little boy cooperated with what he had. He exhibited a fraternal spirit and so, changed the destiny of his community.

How do we respond to the needs of our community in times of need? The goods we have, our talents, time, knowledge, experience, including our faith are values that we must place at the service of others. A generous and compassionate attitude towards others can enrich the life of many, as well as our own life. Finally, through his generosity and compassion, Christ continues to work miracles in our midst if we trust in God like the servant mention in today’s first reading.

Have a Happy and Blessed Sunday!

Yours in Jesus

Fr. Doss