St. Volodymyr's Parish

Today’s Gospel tells us about the big crowds of people who came to see Christ. We heard that there were 5000 men, besides women and children. And Christ performed a big miracle. He "had compassion on them, and healed their sick” and multiplied 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish.

I’d like to highlight a couple of points to reflect about from today’s Gospel.

When we read the Gospel according to St Matthew, before this paragraph we can see that Jesus withdrew to a lonely place apart from the others after he heard about the death of John the Baptist. We know that the Baptiser was not only the prophet and forerunner of Christ, but also His cousin. That is why Jesus decided to be alone.

But when people found out where Jesus was, they came to Him with all their needs. They came to hear Him, to receive something form Him. We see that there were a lot of people. And what did Jesus do when He saw them? He didn’t leave them, or go to another place, but He came to them, had compassion on them and healed all their infirmities. Christ finds time for everyone. He helps everyone. And that’s not all… because when it became night and the number of people didn’t decrease and disciples said Christ to send people away, because they didn’t have any food, Jesus said: "you give them something to eat”. Disciples marvelled and said that had just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, so how they could feed so many people? Jesus said: "bring it to me” and blessed it, gave to the disciples and they gave it to people. And all were satisfied and picked up 12 baskets of remaining pieces.

We can see that everyone who come to God receive that, what he/she is asking for and even more. God takes care about us. He fulfils everything that we ask with sincerely heart. People who came to Jesus didn’t think about food, but He took care about it. God finds time for every of us. He loves us and appreciates every of us. But do we have time for God?! How often in our life we lack a time to be with God. Because of our different troubles, problems, laziness, duties, etc. We can’t, we don’t know how, we don’t want find time for God. But He waits for us… He is waiting every moment… He is waiting to do miracle for us.

Very often we don’t even know how to see this miracle. We are waiting for something extraordinary, but God uses other people to do something in our life. Look, Jesus gave bread to the apostles and they spread it among the people. People probably were not even aware of what happened. They got food, but didn’t know how it appeared.

On the other hand we supposed to be the instrument of God, which He uses to make miracles for other people. But do we ready for this? Would we like to assist God make miracles in this world? Do we want to do it by our good word, example, varying help (physical, moral, finance, etc.)?

Another part of the Gospel that I’d like us to pay our attention to is when Jesus "looked up to heaven, and blessed” the loaves of bread. He thanked God for what they had, blessed it and gave to the disciples and they distributed it among people.

Very often we forget one simple thing: we have nothing of our own – everything is granted to us by God… because of our work, of our efforts… I think that if we remember that, we will be able to thank God for everything that we have. Mainly we ask God many things, because we need something all the time… we need health, welfare, peace, something else… we ask and forget to say God: "thank you for what you gave me”. We forget to thank when we go to bed at night for all that we had during a day. For all… not just for good thing, but also for some regrettable things, which we had. Let’s be able to thank God at the morning for He raised us up from sleeping. Let’s be able to thank God for his help. Let’s be able to thank other people who are around us.

I’d like to wish every of us to be able to experience miracle in our life, to be able see this miracle and be thankful God for it, to be able be an instruments of God to do miracle in the life of other people.  I’d like to wish every of us to be able to be with God every moment of our life here on the earth and also for ever in the heavens. Amen.

Fr. Andriy Mykytyuk