SEVEN LOAVES AND SEVEN BASKETS

A SERMON FOR THE 6TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

This week, our Lord finds himself in what, for us, would be a pretty awkward situation.  It arises as he preaches to a great multitude, four thousand strong, who have followed him out into the wilderness.  What happens next is a very natural thing that you’d think someone would have planned for—the crowds haven’t eaten for three days, and they’re hungry.  The need for food is becoming not merely the desire to satisfy their appetite, but something far more urgent.  The elderly and infirm are becoming weak to the point that they would faint on their way home.  The situation is actually becoming critical—dangerous even.  The hunger of the crowd becomes more and more compelling. They have to eat.  Fully aware of what’s going on, our Lord provides us with the very obvious lesson that we should always trust in Divine Providence. How does he do that?  By miraculously feeding them.  But there’s another lesson that the Gospel writer deliberately includes in this story, and it’s this second, hidden lesson that concerns us today.

Let’s remember that this was the Son of God.  He can do all things, he knows all things.  So, we ask ourselves, before he performs this miracle, why does he want to know how many loaves of bread they have?  He would have no problem feeding the multitude whether they had a hundred loaves, or one loaf, or no loaves of bread at all.  And yet he asked them, “How many loaves have ye?  And they said, Seven.”

Think Church, think the number seven, and what comes to mind?  It is of, course, the number of the Seven Sacraments. Our Lord asked how many loaves they had, so that they would answer “seven” and it would be forever known and taught that, just as surely as our Lord and God fed his four thousand hungry followers in the wilderness, so now today does his Church feed her needy faithful with the seven sacraments. 

And how many faithful exactly will worthily receive these seven sacraments and save their souls?  Hopefully, more than the four thousand mentioned in today’s Gospel!  This number of four thousand is not meant to be applied literally to the number of the elect.  But let’s face it, it was a huge number of people who were just choosing to abandon their homes and workplaces for several days and walk miles, far out into the wilderness, without even packing a picnic lunch, just to hear someone preach to them. Any modern-day preacher would be thrilled to attract such crowds under such conditions.  After all, how many men and women since Adam and Eve have been prepared to make sacrifices like these so they can avail themselves of the seven sacraments?  I don’t know the exact number, but St. John writes in the Book of the Apocalypse: “I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.”  Believe me, God appreciates the sacrifices you all make every Sunday to come here into this relatively pleasant wilderness of Urbana.  For many, it’s a long drive, but it’s worth it. Why?  Certainly not because you get to hear me preach!  You come here to be fed.  Not with just words, but with the sacraments.  The bread of life.  Yes, it’s worth the long drive, it’s worth the sacrifice.

How many graces will you receive?  They are infinite.  Seven loaves were distributed, but the crumbs that were left over filled seven baskets. There was more bread after they ate than there was before.  Another miracle.  And again, with the sacraments, no matter how many people partake of these seven sacraments, or how often, there remain at the end of the day the same infinite graces as there were in the beginning.  These graces have been distributed through the sacraments now for two thousand years, and today we have access to just as many of these infinite graces as those who stood at the foot of the Cross the day those graces began to flow from the sacred wounds of our Lord.  There’s enough grace for all of us, and there always will be enough.  No matter how much we need, and let’s face it, some of us need a lot!

Spare a thought finally for those souls who know no better but to reject the seven sacraments.  Instead of remaining loyal to the Son of God and staying with him in the wilderness, they have left our Lord and his words of truth to follow other preachers, mere men like Martin Luther, wandering off on their own, far from the pasture of the Catholic Church, to a dark place where there is nothing to eat.  Here they die, devoid of nourishment, devoid of life, devoid of grace.  They were Christian enough to follow our Lord into the wilderness, but apparently not Christian enough to trust him, to stay with him and receive the nourishment of the seven sacraments he established for our salvation. 

They claim not to need the Church, they don’t need sacraments given to them by priests.  They claim they want to be fed directly by Christ himself.  But that’s not what our Lord did, is it?  After he took the seven loaves, and he gave thanks, and he broke them, he was not the one who then gave the pieces of bread to the multitude. No, “he gave to his disciples to set before them, and they (the disciples) did set them before the people.” That’s the way our Lord wants it to be. He could have fed the multitude all by himself, but he didn’t.  He intends  to distribute these outward signs of inward grace visibly by priests of the Church, especially ordained for this very purpose.

Today we’re faced with a new problem.  Our former brethren of the Holy Roman Catholic Church imagine they’ve come up with better ways to confect the sacraments.  They’ve chosen to tamper with the words and ceremonies of the sacraments to the extent that we can no longer trust them to be valid!  It is the primary role of the papacy, given by Christ to St. Peter: “Feed my sheep!” He said it three times to make sure Peter understood.  And for almost two thousand years, he and his successors did understand.  Today though?

Are we so-called traditional Catholics perhaps the only ones left who still receive the graces of valid sacraments?  If so, then it falls to us to seek out those other poor lost souls who are trying to find food, but are being fed with nothing but rubbish, if not actual poison.  Seek them out!  Especially seek out those who seek!  Find those lost sheep who are trying to find their way home, and lead them back to the Good Shepherd.  Show them the way to the true sacraments, the true Mass.  And for the rest, the spiritually anorexic who refuse to eat, who refuse to partake of the true sacraments, pray for them.  Explain to them, if they’ll listen, the dangers they pose for their spiritual health, how refusing the sacraments is nothing less than a death-wish for their soul.  Point out their ingratitude to our Blessed Lord who seeks, continually, to care for them and make sure they don’t faint along the way.

Let’s be sure of remaining one of those four thousand, who stayed with Christ in the wilderness and were fed with the seven loaves.  And after we have been fed, fed with our Blessed Sacrament today, after we hear the priest’s words “Ite, missa est” we, like the four thousand, will return to our regular daily life.  Just as our Lord sent the multitude on its way home, we will also go home, not fainting on the way but strengthened by the sacraments.  Once we get there, we who have been fed with our seven loaves must now share with our neighbor the seven baskets that are left over. We must seek out a whole new multitude of faithful to share in the graces that come from the sacraments of Christ’s Church.  We may be small in number and there may be many against us, but don’t be afraid to seek them out and bring them in.  Believe me, there are enough graces to go round.