The twelve basketful of leftover shows that God is lavishly generous. In order to appreciate His generosity, we need to understand it within the context of the miracles performed by Christ. Each one is a Messianic sign of the Kingdom of God because each one describes how things will be when Christ rules in our world and in our hearts. Miracles verify the truth of His preaching which, according to the Catechism, “are accompanied by mighty works and wonders and signs” (CCC547). In other words, His miracles—the lame walk, the blind see, the dead are brought back to life and today, the hungry are fed—inaugurate His Kingdom in which men are liberated from slavery to sin so as to live in the freedom of God’s children.
The operative word is liberation. Unfortunately, we generally stop at God’s generosity. Our entitled ears are incapable of grasping the full extent of Christ’s Kingship of our hearts and of our world. Sure, we love a God who is benevolent and providential. More so, we prefer a God who can bend to our will. When we want a pliable God, we will never be able to appreciate the 3rd Luminous mystery where Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of God..
What is this Kingdom?
Taking our cue from the miracle of the multiplication, Pedro Arrupe, a recent general of the Society of Jesus commented that the Holy Eucharist is not complete as long as people still go hungry in the world. Again, our selective hearing perceives this as a physico-logistical or socio-economical problem. Inequality or injustice prevents the just distribution of food in the world. Actionable people that we are, we want to immediately jump into righting what is wrong. So, we have food distribution programmes—like the one conducted by the Office of Human Development. We aid the poor with provision and groceries. But, even where social justice is not an issue, we do not realise how our exercise of freedom has an impact on hunger. When we consume, we want as many options or alternatives as possible because we associate freedom with the availability of choices. Say, a loaf of bread. Simply put, the baker has to bake X loaves different types of bread (wholegrain, white, brown etc) just so that one can exercise the freedom to choose. A person who walks into a bakery will not buy all the available choices. He generally buys a loaf of bread. At the end of the day, excess bread is discarded. Built into our freedom is the sin of wastage. Think of one of our festivities, like the upcoming Mooncake festival and you get the picture. All the assorted permutations of novelties—Musang King mooncake, with lotus seed paste, with/without egg-yolk etc. When the festivity is over, unsold food has to be disposed of.
There are systemic inequalities in our political and economic systems. Both the programme of equitable distribution of food and the exercise of freedom highlight a challenge with regard to the establishment of the Kingdom of Christ. We often forget that a central element that hinders the Kingdom’s foundation is personal sin. In healing people from sickness and forgiving their sins, Jesus was freeing them for the Kingdom. When we are slaves to sin, human bondage is the result. Personal sin, and not only systemic inequality, be it political, social, economic etc, is a major cause of human misery.
Thus, the key to a better world, a society more reflective of God’s Kingdom, is not just systemic but profoundly personal. Physical hunger has a spiritual cause. Perhaps Greta Thunberg was right when she railed against our environmental excesses by making a personal choice of travelling less especially in air travel. But because we lean towards heavily towards science, we may be tempted to solve the problem of personal sin technically. Social engineering is a good example of a technical solution. However, what we fail to recognise is that no matter how good we are technically, our solution will be thwarted personally. The goodness of a system can be destroyed by personal sin. “Repent and believe the Gospel” indicates that the beginning of the Kingdom is found in the forgiveness of sins and conversion. Personal conversion makes possible the future coming of the Kingdom.
Thus, God may be generous, but His providence is not indulgent. He loves us undoubtedly as we hear in the 2nd Reading. “Nothing can come between us and the love that God has for us” means that God’s love is ever so faithful. Whilst that may be true, we often place obstacles in the path of His love for us. Thus, God’s providence is an invitation to enter into personal conversion. The realisation of God’s Kingdom must always begin with the human heart. There the battle for the soul is fought. In this, we take comfort that God will never give up on us. Neither should we.
