Isaiah 55:1-3

Ps 145(144):8-9.15-16. 17-18. ℟ cf. 16

Romans 8:35, 37-39

Matthew 14:13-21

Prelim:  The “Days of the Lord“ (The Liturgical Press) says that up to the 18th Sunday the Gospel of Matthew is centred on the mystery of the kingdom of heaven. Now (18th to 20th Sunday) we are concerned with the community of the disciples - the church - which will be built after the Lord‘s resurrection. The Sunday Lectionary has taken five excerpts from this section and grouped them in two sequences. The first is composed of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Sundays. In the gospel readings for these days, the central topic is faith in Jesus, who multiplies the loaves (Mt 14: 13–21), who comes to the age of his own when their boat is tossed about by the storm (Mt 14:23–33), who answers a foreigner's prayer (Mt 15:21–28).

The readings on this Sunday (Gospel: feeding of the 5000) are all about joy and celebration; and the first and third about a party.  A ‘party' with Eucharistic connotations?  The ‘creation' of the Community ………. the Church?

Isaiah:  These three verses come from the “Book of Consolation“, promising an abundance of “good things“; which is a consolation when one is hungry for food and thirsty for water. In a sense Isaiah is inviting his listeners to a 'party': to share the banquet prepared by 'Wisdom' for those who wish to learn God's ways. In doing so it fulfils the tradition of the covenant which dominates the Bible: God made an alliance, a special bond, with special promises to Abraham, renewed it and intensified it to Moses and again to David. When Israel shattered that covenant, God promised a new covenant (for us ratified again at Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples). 

Romans:  This is possibly the fullest explanation given by Paul of just how Christ saves us, and how we are made a new creation and now live by the Spirit of Christ.  Just before our reading, comes a series of rhetorical questions: cf: vv31-34. Then this expression of Paul's total confidence in God's saving love, from which nothing can cut us off: nothing can get between Christ and us.

Matthew:  After Jesus heard of the beheading of John the Baptist, he goes to a lonely place away from, what must have been, a tense, fraught and dangerous situation. The people follow and find him at another part of the lake. Despite the long, emotional, and probably frightening days just experienced, Jesus teaches those present, heals their sick and then refuses to leave them to fend for themselves.  How many were there? We don't know, for the numbers are symbolic, as they often are with Matthew.  In the Bible 12 alerts us to the tribes of Israel: so the 12 baskets of scraps possibly show that the crowd is the 12 tribes of Jesus' new Israel.  The way Jesus then takes the bread and says the blessing reminds us of the Eucharist.

Worth noting:

European Holocaust Memorial Day for Roma and Sinti Victims - observed annually on 2 August, commemorating the murder of thousands of Roma and Sinti people at The Holocaust. The date marks the liquidation of the “Gypsy family camp” at Auschwitz in 1944.

A number of recognised international days also occur shortly after 2 August:

• International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples - 9 August  
• International Youth Day - 12 August  
• World Humanitarian Day - 19 August  
• International Day Commemorating Victims of Violence Based on Religion or Belief - 22 August.  
• International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition - 23 August. 

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2026 marks several major round-number anniversaries:

• 80th  anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials (1946) beginning that year after World War II.
• ‍81 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August 1945).

For the eighteenth Sunday of ordinary time the Church gives us a challenging prayer to be said over the offerings at Mass. After praying for the sanctification of the gifts of bread and wine, and for the oblation of the spiritual sacrifice to be accepted, we conclude the prayer by saying: make of us an eternal offering to you. The Eucharist is the offering of Christ, certainly, but it is also the self-offering of the Church.

We were made by God, and therefore belong to God. He has a right to expect our dedication to his service. Alas! How often do we deny him his due; and how we struggle to give ourselves back to him. Nevertheless, it is what we have to do.

Faith is the beginning. We must believe that God exists, and rewards those who seek him. Then we need to trust him to look out for us, to watch over us, to care for us. But trusting divine providence is not enough; entrusting ourselves to him is another challenge and just as necessary.

We need to renounce control over our lives. Only then can God act as he desires- for he will rarely force our hand. In all sorts of, often petty, ways we have to give up trying to shape our own destiny.

Our sense of being in control is largely an illusion anyway. Of ourselves we can achieve little, and our own standards of success are somewhat shaky. But if God has control he can achieve much with us. We do not even need to know what he is doing, or has done. We have only to pray: make of us an eternal offering to you. And then strive to do his will.

BIDDING PRAYERS

Let us pray for all who confess Christ as Lord, that we may give ourselves to his service, and become a spiritual sacrifice, wholly acceptable to him.

Let us pray that the nations may consecrate themselves as the Lord's possession, putting their trust in him and dedicating themselves to do his will in all things. 

Let us pray for all who have died in Christ, that they may live in him whose service is perfect freedom.

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Key

Hymns selected from the Laudate hymnbook:

639 We have gathered

643 Gifts of bread and wine

684 I sing the almighty power of God

702 God, my King, your might confessing

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