Love in the Midwest

Seventeenth Sunday of the Year. Fr Lawrence Lew is inspired by his experiences in Indianapolis.

Last week, some 80,000 gathered in a Midwest American city, and all were fed. In fact, the majority of us had to make do with a diet of ‘fast food’, which is hardly as nourishing or satisfying as one would like, but all of us were fed. We were fed spiritually, and the bond of love for one another and for the Lord in the Eucharist was so tangible and visible that the bystanders and local people of Indianapolis – a city well-accustomed to hosting large conventions – have been commenting upon it. For they had been drawn into the communion of love that is the Church, they had seen the love that is God enfleshed and made visible on the streets of their city. As one security guard observed, ‘there is something different with how you treat us and treat one another.’

In a week of turbulent political news from the USA, the only worthwhile news was this: that a multitude came together in Indianapolis for the 10th National Eucharistic Congress, and despite all the physical sacrifices and near-chaos needed to be there, there was much love, joy, and peace. Because, as the psalm response today says: God opened wide his hands and granted our desires.

For the deepest desire of the human heart isn’t for food and drink – although these are necessary and are not to be neglected – nor for comfort or wealth or power. All these fade away but love remains. And God pours out his love for us in the Eucharist, indeed through our Holy Communion at Mass we enter into one holy communion with the Blessed Trinity. But this is not a personal gift for us to treasure alone: it is a gift to be shared, and we become like those few bread and loaves, broken for others. We must share the love and joy of God that we receive from Christ, and these spiritual goods, as St Thomas Aquinas reminds us, are inexhaustible unlike temporal goods which are perishable and limited in quantity.

Therefore, one can see in this physical miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish a sign of the plenitude of the true good, the gifts of eternal life, that Christ wants to give us. And anyone who has tasted even the scraps of this communion of love will desire more. I think, for example, of the Hindu Uber driver in Indianapolis who, after a week of hearing and seeing the love and joy of his Catholic passengers, said, ‘When’s the next one of these? I want to go.’ Well, the next US Eucharistic Congress has been planned for 2033, the Jubilee of Redemption.

But in fact what we experienced in Indianapolis was just a reminder of what can be and ought to be in every parish, every Eucharistic community, for the same God who loves us and satisfies our deepest desires and who feeds our hunger is present in the Eucharist, everywhere in the world.

Like the lad who offers Christ the few things he has, we can offer to God our littleness, our few gifts. What we have and the little we do can often seem so paltry in the face of the needs of so great a multitude. In my corner of the Church, in a secularised world, what can I do? But the increase is not ours but God’s. We need only to offer to God in faith what we do have, what we can, and his grace and power will multiply that. So, we must come to him with faith, trusting in God to accomplish his signs and his wonders through us, and with us. For he shall open wide his hands and satisfy our desires… desires for peace, for unity, for love.

Some people who were present at the National Eucharistic Congress experienced that even in a polarised Church, Christ’s loving power can still unite us in charity, in communion. Even as the bickering continued online, no one who was at the Congress could fail to be moved by the profound unity of the crowd of 80,000 who knelt in silence during adoration. There was a powerful sense of unity and peace and communion. For God is in the silence. And he is our Unity. We say this, and we profess this but sometimes we don’t act like it. But this past week, I experienced in an intense way the truth of the Eucharist as our sacrament of unity which unites us in charity.

And as Christ’s beloved, fed and satisfied by him, we must be willing to share his love and be as bread broken for others, even despite the risks and the hurt. For we know that God will heal and save us, he will increase the little we give him, and he wills to work the miracle of holy communion through us and with us and in us. So, let us open wide our hearts and hands to him, and be revived by his love.

Readings: 2 Kings 4:42-44 | Ephesians 4:1-6 | John 6:1-15

Image: Croydon Minster, painting ‘Feeding of the Five Thousand’ on North wall of chancel, photographed by Andy Scott, from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0