We have a tendency to exaggerate the virtue of the Holy men and women who went before us. While we must certainly say that the Canonized Saints exhibited heroic virtue, that does not mean they were not also sinners like us in need of a savior. In fact, had the Saints not needed a savior, they would not even be Christian. God’s grace works hiddenly within us to perfect what He wants to perfect in us so long as we cooperate with His work. Sometimes we may be distressed to witness the lack of perfection or even the apparent total lack of goodness in our hearts and in our lives. This too is the work of grace, inviting us to allow God to do His work within us. The ups and downs of our spiritual and human life can lead us to a point near hopelessness – this is something even Elijah the Holy Prophet of God experienced. He was ready to throw in the towel, to give up and die. He saw how much of a poor sinner he was and how he “was no better than his fathers.” God responds to this sadness and exhaustion not with a new teaching or with a rebuke, but with something very simple: food.
Saint Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr
The grace and consolation of the Christian life is given to those who live and act in faith. Growth in our spiritual life implies pain in just the same way as our bodies experienced growing pains while they were stretched to accommodate our full physical maturity. The spiritually mature do not reach maturity without passing through various, successive and painful deaths. The body stretches painfully to become the place of a soul capable of living out the fullness of it’s human life. The soul is stretched painfully through the guilt and grief of a life lived according to false notions of fullness. Suffering is much more important for our spiritual life than the simple punishment for misdeeds – our own or the misdeeds of others. Christ shows us that suffering is actually the path of holiness which best frees us from our attachment to a life that is beneath our deepest thirst for happiness. Some spiritual growth can only take place when the love that causes us to cling to the world and its passing pleasures faces its own vanity and anxious drive to indulge.
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
A friend reminded me today of an interpretation of this miracle story that I’ve heard before. The basic gist of it is that the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes was caused not by some supernatural quantitative multiplication of bread and fish, but rather by the fact that people had brought food with them and decided to share. This makes Christ out to be some kind of parental figure who gets his children to not be selfish but share. The miracle story becomes instead a lesson in morality about the importance of sharing. While sharing is important, it doesn’t quite express the freshness of the Gospel – any civilized group of people understands the probable utility and calculated risk involved in sharing; no need for the Gospel there.