Five loaves and two fish

"There is a small boy here with five barley loaves and two fish, but what is that among so many?" Jesus said to the apostles, "Make the people sit down." They filled 12 hampers with scraps left over. How many times have we heard it said: "I wouldn’t mind helping out, but I just don’t have enough time." Or maybe: "What could I do? There are plenty of people with far more time, talent, and experience than I have."

Our gifts, however small, are given fearlessly because of the abundance of God’s power to make something out of them. Our own competence is not the whole picture. We can readily admit that we don’t have all the answers. We may not even have a clue. We can accept the fact that we don’t have enough money or enough education, or enough experience for the task at hand, but that’s not always an excuse. What we can do is offer the little we have in a spirit of trust that the Lord will make up for our deficiencies.

As one commentator puts it, what is so wonderful about the Lord is not that He makes things out of nothing, but that He takes what He is given and makes do. He makes strength out of weakness and fills the crowd with five loaves and two fish. On our side, it is necessary only that we are fearless enough to offer our own brand of weakness. What is necessary is that we offer all five of our loaves and both fish, however insignificant our contributions might seem.

We have found this kind of attitude so necessary in our work with the blind. Literally we had nothing: no experience, no money. But whatever little we had we fearlessly, if prayerfully, offered as our contribution. Our five loaves and two fish has grown into Ephpheta Foundation for the Blind. For over 66 years now, Ephpheta has established and trained 955 blind persons from Metro Manila and the provinces, saved 24,686 persons from cataract blindness, put up 103 housing units for families of the blind, built a soap factory and a massage center manned by the blind, and built a chapel for their worship needs. It’s the multiplication of the loaves and fish all over again.

"How can I serve this little bit of bread to a hundred men?" Give it to the people, for the Lord says this: "They will eat and have some left over." Some of this same spirit has to filter down to those of us who are called to serve in more ordinary ways. If we want our government to be more sensitive to the needs of the poor; if we are committed to the rights of the disabled; if we want to see our communities come alive, we have no other option but to step in and offer our five loaves and two fish to the Lord. We have to rise above our timidity; our fear, or our laziness, and confidently present what we have to the Lord and let Him take it from there.

Let us reflect on a few lines from Teilhard de Chardin: "To read the gospel with an open mind is to see beyond all possibility of doubt that Jesus came to bring us . . . not only a new life superior to that we are conscious of, but also . . . a new physical power of acting upon our temporal world . . . If it is true that the development of the world can be influenced by our faith in Christ, then to let this power lie dormant within us would indeed be unpardonable." (from Hymn to the Universe)

17th S of O.T. John 6, 1-15.