“The Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines.” That sounds delicious, doesn’t it? It sounds just like our Christmas celebrations that we will be enjoying soon.
Both of the readings for mass talk about meals. In today’s gospel, Jesus is worried about what the people will eat, because they had been with him a long time and he didn’t want to send them away hungry. If you think about the gospel in light of the first reading for Mass, then it is easy to see that Jesus thinks, and more importantly feels, the same way as his Father.
In the first reading, God showed His people how much he loves them by feeding them delicious foods, but it wasn’t just good food that He provided for them. God said He will destroy death forever and wipe away all of their tears. He will remove the reproach of His people from all of the earth. God wanted to heal His people, and make them whole again.
Jesus did the same thing in today’s gospel, except he healed the sick, the blind and lame. It’s pretty awesome how the gospel describes this was done. The people laid the sick at his feet, and he cured them. Can you picture this? Christ’s gentleness and healing touch. The world still craves his gentleness and healing touch. Jesus had healing hands, a gentle heart and a compassionate concern for those who suffer.
Suffering is not God’s will and it certainly isn’t Jesus’s will either. There are many people that cry and pray and question God, wanting to know why He allows them to suffer, but the readings for Mass clearly show that neither God or Jesus wanted people to suffer. Jesus spent his entire public ministry healing all kinds of sickness and infirmity in the people who came to him.
The gospel today says that Jesus told his disciples that his heart was moved with pity for the large crowd who had stayed with him for three days and did not have anything to eat.
Throughout the different gospel stories we hear of Christ’s concern for the hungry, in fact that will be one of the things we will be judged on at the final judgement. Did we feed the hungry? This does not always mean giving money to strangers, although there are plenty of people who need our help. Jesus simply fed the people that he encountered – just because they were hungry. We are supposed to live the gospel in our lives and follow Jesus’s example, so we should feed those around us as well, to share our food with others just as he did.
During the Advent season, we have so many charities that ask for donations, that it is hard to give to all of them, but Catholic Relief Services and Food for the Poor are excellent ones to consider. Donating your unused pantry items to a food bank is also a simple way to share your extra food.
Even though the readings for Mass today make us more aware of the need to feed other people, especially strangers, feeding our own families is also an act of charity too. Cooking a meal at the end of the day after a long day at work, is an unselfish act of love. Eating dinner together as a family is so important, and yet modern families often eat fast food on the run, while hurrying off to the children’s activities. But, time spent together around the dinner table is so much more important than any kind of extracurricular activities the children could do after school. Children will remember the conversations they had with their parents and siblings for the rest of their life. Family bonds are formed and strengthened at the dinner table.
Another simple thought, as we look forward to our own Christmas dinner as a family, would be to invite someone to have dinner with us too. Maybe someone who has never been to dinner at our home before. Even if we do not have very much extra money right now, we can surely find room for one or two more at the dinner table? After all, Jesus managed to feed five thousand people with seven loaves of bread and two fish. Sure, we can’t perform a miracle of this magnitude, but sharing our feast, both great and small, with one or two people outside of our own family, is a little miracle that every single one of us can manage to do.
