Father Dan Juelfs
Homily from the Televised Mass, NewsCenter1
The 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 28, 2024

“They shall eat and there shall be some left over.”

That line comes from the first reading we had today — a reading from the Second Book of Kings. A line that expresses, proclaims that generosity of God providing not only for our needs but also providing an abundance so that there’s some left over. 

Our Gospel account shows a very similar kind of occasion — Jesus taking the five loaves and two fish, feeding the 5,000, and there’s still much left over — 12 baskets full. But we shouldn’t put our focus on, we shouldn’t limit our focus on the physical realities or the physical manifestation and the wonderment about how that’s happened. Those give us a real visual of God’s generosity, but they’re limited in what they can actually tell us. They’re limited to what we can really come to understanding of. What God is offering is far greater than that. It’s his life for all of us, for all eternity. That’s ultimately what God’s come to offer. Far more than we’re able to understand or comprehend. 

We’ve come to realize, through these examples that we see in our readings, that God has a great deal of generosity, and he has an intention to provide for us, intentions to offer us far more than we’re expecting. Yet it’s still not what we grasp because that’s really leading to the fact that he’s going to offer us his Body and his Blood at the Last Supper. Shed his blood on the Cross and then proclaim to us eternal life in his resurrection. Far more than what those multiplications of loaves and fishes would indicate in and of themselves. That what we’re celebrating here and now, is really, as we celebrate Mass, that celebration of that ultimate generosity of our God who is offering us far more than we really are really able to comprehend, to understand. That Jesus is fully present to us in the Eucharist, Body and Blood, soul and divinity. That’s what we’ve come to believe. 

This last week I had the privilege of being part of the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. Sixty-thousand Catholics gathered there to celebrate and proclaim their faith in the real presence of Christ, the real presence of Jesus among us. And not only that but 60,000 people who were then called to walk as one over the next year or so, to help each of them to help at least one person be returned to the practice of their faith. To pray for them, to spend time with them, to invite them to come and share with them and their celebration of your first, their presence at that. But to take time to concentrate on one person. To help that person be returned to the practice of their faith, the practice that they have grown up with or have become a part of and then somehow have found themselves no longer present. 

The four-day event was not simply a celebration of what we believe, but it was an occasion to give each one of us the encouragement, the desire, the energy to help others return to and to also share in that celebration. To come again to their faith in God’s presence and his care for each one of us. 

As we celebrate our faith and God’s generosity, as we celebrate each time we celebrate Mass, we’re reminded that God’s gift is for all and we, you and I, are the means that others come to share in that gift. A reminder that each of us are called to walk with one in order that they may come to again share the fullness of God’s presence in their lives.