We gather today to celebrate the Eucharist, as we do each Sunday, to be nourished by Christ’s Body and Blood. In the Gospel, we hear one of Jesus’ most familiar miracles, the multiplication of the loaves and fish. Every time we celebrate the Eucharist we witness another miracle---the transformation of bread and wine into Jesus’ Body and Blood.
The responsorial psalm today is the familiar and popular Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd.” It describes what the Lord does for us. The Lord refreshes our souls, guides us on the right way, furnishes comfort and safety in challenging times, gives us sustenance to overflowing, and promises a dwelling place forever. Truly, the Lord provides all that we need.
Pope Francis has often used the phrase “missionary disciples.” In his first apostolic exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel (Evangelii Gaudiuum) the Holy Father says: “Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are ‘disciples’ and ‘missionaries,’ but rather that we are always ‘missionary disciples.’ The Holy Father continually calls us back to Christ in the form of ongoing discipleship, and then impelling us to mission,to take what we have been given out to a world that needs this witness and message of love. Pope Francis has said: “The people of God is a people of disciples because we receive faith and a missionary people because w pass on the faith.”
When we gather as a faith community to give glory to God, we expect that our experience will be similar to what it was the week before, or the week before that. Most likely this is how the faithful of Nazareth felt when they went to synagogue. Then one day, Jesus, son of Mary, a carpenter, whom some may have known when he was just a boy stood up to preach. Unlike the crowd in today’s Gospel, may we be open to the Word of God entering in unexpected ways.