By Fr. Antony Christy, SDB –
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 29th July, 2018
2 Kgs 4: 42-44; Eph 4: 1-6; Jn 6: 1-15
The times are bad…those are the words that we hear from almost all contexts today. Economic or Cultural or Moral or Political or Religious… every corner of human existence seems to echo this judgement invariably. Need, misery, unbalanced growth, neglect of a majority, domination of a few, the gross problem of the migrants, resistance and revolts all over, a general sense of loss of meaning and a sort of helplessness that fills the minds of every person of good will… that is what the scene looks like today!
What am I going to do? That is the most pertinent question at the moment. Am I going to give in to that sense of helplessness and hopelessness. That cannot be a Christian attitude, says the Word today. I need to work hand in hand with God and things will surely change. I am fond of a movie titled, I am Gabriel, which begins and ends with the same frame – a shot of village name board. In the opening shot the board reads, ‘where good things never happen’ and the closing shot has the same board and the same reading, with that “never” erased! Where good things happen! Nothing much has changed; just a word removed and the entire sense changes. Even in that village during the movie, nothing much happens but the entire village goes through a revival! How do we revive the earth, and the humanity… by acting hand in hand with God.
GIVE… a heart to give – that is the essential correction needed for the humanity today. We need to have a heart to give, to give with all our heart. That is what God does. God gives, and gives, and gives! When we begin to grow within us a heart to give, to truly give not merely of what we do not want, nor of what is excess with us but of ourselves and of what we actually need and of all that we have, that is Giving after the heart of God. God is essentially a Giver! Elijah is ready to Give, Jesus wants to Give, God is ever ready to Give! Do I have the heart to Give?
OTHERS…an eye for the others – is the radical perspective that needs to guide humanity today. People have ceased to think of the other. Whether a daily scene of jostling in the public places like railway stations or bus terminus or the national politics and policy lobbying…every where humanity has grown cold to the other, thinking only of the self, only of the petty private interests. Even when they think of the common good, they think of what is common to a small circle to where they belong, and not the Greater Common Good…the good of the whole humanity, the good of the whole world – Lokasamgraha, Sarvodhaya, vasudhaiva kutumbaka, Universal brotherhood and Sisterhood, the care for the Common Home…these have become merely wishful thinking!
DO… a mind determined to do – this is the fundamental mindset that can redeem the situation today. At times the good willed persons can lose heart seeing the enormity of the opposition. But that will only be a curse on ourselves. The Word today presents to us the determination of the man who brought the barley loaves to Elijah, Philip who brought the boy with the few loaves to Jesus…they knew what they were doing actually is nothing before the task that lay before them, but they were kind of determined about what they were doing. The One Lord who takes care of everything, the One Lord who is aware of everything, the One Lord who just waiting for us to do our simple part and take our responsible place in this humanity, will see to the needed revival. The Lord will provide the change that is needed for the times, but the times require that we act hand in hand with God.
In Giving, in being sensitive to the Other, and in being determined to Do…, we act hand in hand with God, infact we initiate the very “new thing” that God wants to do – the new heavens and the new earth, the Reign of God here and now!
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him on.