Scripture readings for today's reflection can be found at Memorial of Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church | USCCB
In our
gospel for today we hear of the familiar story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people.
These were people that were following Jesus and seeing him heal their sick.
They were naturally attracted to Jesus due to the good he was doing among them.
Jesus was showing them the love God has towards all of them and was helping
them to develop a deeper relationship with the Father.
Then, seeing
their hunger and having concern for their welfare, Jesus decided to feed the
crowd. He knew how he was going to do this but was putting the apostles to the
test. They really didn’t know how to resolve such an issue. They saw the vast
crowd and couldn’t figure out how to feed all of them with such a small amount
of food that the boy had.
Jesus took
control. After everyone sat down, Jesus gave thanks for the food and had the
apostles distribute it. As a result, there was plenty of food left over once
everyone was fed.
We see
really two things in Jesus feeding the five thousand: first, we should expect
to have our faith tested. Second, we should look to the Lord and expect him to
provide for us abundantly.
In our own
day-to-day lives, we have many different struggles that we don’t know how to
resolve. Instead of trying to solve these problems alone, we need to learn from
the apostles: turn to Jesus in prayer and he will help us in whatever situation
we’re facing. This gospel is teaching us that Jesus is always present to us,
whether we’re sick, or hungry, or facing difficult situations. We may not get the
resolution to our problems in a way that we want, but the Lord will respond to
our problems in a way that we need. Jesus is always present to us in all our
needs. We just need to go to Him in prayer to help us through all our issues
and problems. Jesus will always be there for us. Our prayer to Jesus should
always be, “Jesus, I trust in you!”
Thanks for this beautiful reflection reminding us to always pray to Jesus and trust in His Mercy for whatever situation we may have.
ReplyDeleteFrom Arlene B.Muller
ReplyDeleteI really relate to a title of a book written by one of Red Skeleton's comedy writers: "GOD HAS NEVER FAILED ME: BUT HE'S SURE SCARED ME TO DEATH A FEW TIMES" and the quote from Psalm 34: "Many are the troubles of the just,but out of them all the LORD delivers them".