Mass Readings and Scripture Reflections

July 28, 2024

If you’ve ever lived in a household of hungry teens, you know a bit about what it’s like to feed thousands! For a stretch of time not all that long ago, it seemed like I fed thousands daily, making bottomless pots of spaghetti and sky-high stacks of quesadillas.

 

Although our teens always ate as though they were on the brink of starvation, none of them were ever hungry enough to be thrilled about leftovers. Leftovers, after all, were just… left over—stale fragments of a formally delicious meal. And today’s Gospel has a lot of leftovers. The people following Jesus are poor; they are the culture’s “leftovers,” hungry for food and wisdom and signs. The meal itself comes from a “leftover” child who appears without parents. And eventually, after Jesus feeds everyone, leftovers are everywhere: fish and bread, 12 baskets full.

 

Do you see it? Jesus feeds the crowd and tells his followers to gather the fragments. The leftovers. We’re his followers now. So we too are to gather the fragments: everyone who is too small, too poor, too messy or broken to be considered useful; everything that is too troublesome or irritating or somebody else’s business or not worth stooping to pick up; Even the parts of ourselves that are too fractured or damaged to seem salvageable.

 

Jesus Christ tells us to gather them up. Why is that? Because in this story, Jesus provides the bread, and a very few verses later, he is the bread. Dear friends, those gathered leftover fragments—the broken, forgotten, unwanted—aren’t extras to be tossed away and forgotten. They’re the body of Christ.

 

— Deborah L. Wilhelm
“Living the Word,” Volume 40