Sixth Sunday After Pentecost

6th Sunday after Pentecost

Dominus fortitudo plebis suae et protector salutarium Christi sui est: The Lord is the strength of His people and the protector of the salvation of His anointed.

Beloved in Christ, today’s liturgical texts express this most profound truth of our faith: we who are weak creatures find our strength in our dependence on God. By our willing attachment to God and loving obedience to His precepts, we find our strength and consolation.

The epistle appointed for this sixth Sunday after Pentecost reminds us, in St. Paul’s characteristic language, that we who have been baptized in Christ have been buried together with Him.  This burial refers to the emersion of our bodies into the waters of baptism, a mystical enactment within ourselves of Christ’s own death and burial in the tomb.

This burial, which is at once both symbol and effect, is the sacramental means by which the children of God are regenerated to new life, sub-ject to the life of grace.  Through this cleansing effected by God we have died to both sin and eternal death and have been awakened to the eternal life begun here below by grace and moral conversion.  St. Paul reminds us that “as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we may also walk in the newness of life – as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.

It is this which comprises the strength and consolation of God in Christian living.  Today’s alleluia verse cries out, “In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded; deliver me in Thy justice.  Incline Thine ear unto me, make haste to deliver me.”  What surer sign of the eternal protection of Divine Providence can be found than in the constant succor poured out on us through grace?  For despite the evident failure of man in today’s society, God is still leading us all by His providence and grace.

In today’s Gospel St. Matthew recounts one of the miracles of loaves and fishes.  All of Christ’s miracles have, as their final purpose, the opening of the eyes of our hearts to the supernatural healing of men’s souls, the dawning of the King-dom here and now.  St. Ambrose said, “Elijah, sustained by the food given to him by an angel walked for forty days…but you, fed by Jesus will walk until your arrival in the land of the saints.”

Situated far from populated areas, a crowd of thousands had come to hear Jesus preach. Al-ready we are subject to a teaching: to find our salvation, we must turn away from the world centered on men, away from the errors of human society – we must bring our hearts to the desert, to the mountaintops, rest in solitude, and con-template the majesty and truth of God. After hav-ing preached, Our Lord said, “I have compassion for this crowd: we have been together for three days and they are hungry. We can’t send them away hungry for many have come a long way and they will faint en route.”

His astonished disciple answered, all too na-turally, “where can we get bread to feed so many in this wilderness?”  Indeed the point is well made:  but here is its meaning: we who are far from our eternal homes, we who are fainting on the path – where can we find the true bread which leads to life and salvation?

Christ answered then, as He continues to this very day and unto the consummation of the ages: He commands us to place ourselves before Him in right order as children of God, as the sons of di-vine grace.  And looking into heaven, contem-plating the majesty and omnipotence of His Fa-ther, one with Him in divine substance, He gave thanks, and broke the the loaves which had been brought to Him.  And as to the four thousand, He fed them to the full; and in the century upon cen-tury of the slow but unfailing march of His Church ever since, He has continued to feed us: not with a natural food supernaturally multiplied, but with a supernatural food naturally consumed, unto good, in penance by those pilgrims who would but find that abundance of life which God has promised to them.

And so Beloved, week by week, moment by moment, faith bids us to call upon Him Who is our hope and strength.  In so doing we must remain faithful in our daily lives to the liberty offered through true and sacrificial obedience to His precepts.  In doing just this, He will free us from sin and eternal death as we collaborate in His mission of mercy and salvation to the world at large.  It is in this fidelity to Christ that we will come in time to the glory of His Resurrection; it is through a life of humble and docile service to our King here below that will usher us in, at last, to sing with Mary and offer with the Church Trium-phant a sacrifice of jubilation in glory.  And the good and gracious Jesus, ever faithful to His boundless love for men, will continue to pour on us grace upon grace, vivified by the Cross and communicated to the living by the sublime sacri-fice of Himself, the Living Bread come down from heaven.

And thus we prayed with Holy Church in this Sunday’s opening collect: O God of power and might, Who are the giver of all good things; implant in our hearts the love of Thy name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and by Thy mercy keep us ever in the same. And this we ask through Christ Our Lord….