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Showing posts with the label The Feeding of the 5000

Homily for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 25, 2021, Year B

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Fr. René J. Butler, M.S. La Salette Missionaries of North America Hartford, Connecticut ( Click here for Sunday’s readings ) How much food can you buy for $11,600.00? Maybe 1,365 small pepperoni pizzas. Not enough. Or about 2,900 hamburgers. Not enough. Or about 1,900 rotisserie chickens. Still not enough. Not enough, according to the Apostle Philip, to feed the large crowd that was following Jesus. "Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little," he says. Assuming today’s federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, times 8 hours a day, times 5 days a week, times 40 weeks, you get $11,600.00.  Not enough to feed this crowd. This feeding of the multitude is one of the few events that is recorded in all four Gospels. In each case the text specifies five thousand men, and Matthew even notes that this number does not include women and children. The point in each Gospel is that what is on hand, the "supply" in economic term

The Church Fathers on the Feeding of the Multitude

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He multiplied in his hands the five loaves, just as he produces harvest out of a few grains. There was a power in the hands of Christ; and those five loaves were, as it were, seeds, not indeed committed to the earth, but multiplied by him who made the earth. — Augustine  For although the Lord had the power to supply wine to those feasting, independently of any created substance, and to fill with food those who were hungry, he did not adopt this course; but, taking the loaves which the earth had produced, and giving thanks, and on the other occasion making water wine, he satisfied those who were reclining (at table), and gave drink to those who had been invited to the marriage; showing that the God who made the earth, and commanded it to bring forth fruit, who established the waters, and brought forth the fountains, was he who in these last times bestowed upon mankind, by his Son, the blessing of food and the favor of drink: the incomprehensible [acting thus] by means of the comprehensi

Homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 2, 2020, Year A

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Fr. René J. Butler, M.S.  La Salette Missionaries of North America  Hartford, Connecticut  ( Click here for today’s readings ) Isaiah was surely an honest prophet, but he doesn’t seem to have grasped the economic principle of an honest profit. “You who have no money,” he says, “come, receive grain and eat; come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!” Imagine if you owned a restaurant in town, and someone set up a local charity serving the same menu, or maybe even better, and offering it free of charge to one and all. At the very least, you would object that the charity was making a mess of the local economy. Jesus wasn’t helping the local economy either. Surely local farmers and vendors were counting on a banner day when they saw the huge crowds gathered in the area. Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel there is an account of Jesus’ casting out demons from two possessed persons into a large herd of swine. The entire herd ran down into the Sea of Galilee and drowned. When the loc