A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

​We do not often hear Saint Andrew speak in the Gospel. His presentation of a boy with five barley loaves and two fish in the face of five thousand hungry people in the Gospel of this Mass may well seem risible. But his attendant question “What is that amongst so many?” provides much material for contemplation.
 
For indeed, five barley loaves and two fish are inadequate. It would almost be an insult to begin to feed such a multitude with so little. If that is all one has one could rightly feel inclined to give up the prospect entirely. Others would justifiably mock or stand back in silent contempt waiting for the failure of the attempt, lending no support themselves but at the ready to offer self-righteous commiseration when it all went wrong.
 
How often do we experience our own inadequacy? How often does this prevent us from attempting something good or important? Many worthwhile initiatives and even God-given vocations die before they are born, as it were, for fear of failure due to apparent lack of means. I don’t have what it takes – materially or spiritually – I will tell myself. And so I do not move forward. Good if not great things that might been never comes to pass. And the self-righteous commiserate: it could never have been anyway, they assure us.
 
However, whilst five barley loaves and two fish are inadequate, they are not nothing. They were all that was available, howsoever insufficient.
 
But these clearly limited resources were offered by Saint Andrew to Our Lord. And it is they that He took into His hands, and blessed, and multiplied, to the end that all present were fed, and more still was left over.
 
Incredible. Miraculous. Instructive.
 
Incredible because this sort of thing just does not happen. Miraculous because it could only happen through the direct intervention of the supernatural power of God. Instructive because it teaches us that if we too offer Our Lord the meagre goods we have, His blessing can work miracles in and through us.
 
My brothers and sisters, a year ago two monks with few material resources and recently chided for a lack of faith by the monk who came to preach their Lenten days of recollection, made a formal offer to purchase the property in which we are this morning. It was indeed risible. What we had was insufficient. But we offered it, entrusting it to the intercession of Saint Joseph – on whose feast the letter was signed – and here we are this morning, a year later, daily living in the miracle of God’s Providence made concrete by the generosity of so many friends and benefactors throughout the world.
 
Our little monastery is, then, a modest testament to what the Gospel teaches us in this Holy Mass: if we offer what we have in faith and in trust, He can do with even the little that we have things that we cannot begin to hope to realise.
 
Saint Benedict teaches the same principle when he states that if the Abbot he be tempted to complain of lack of means in providing for his monks, let him remember the words: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his approval; and all these things will be yours without the asking (Mat. 6:33) and again: Those that fear him never go wanting (Ps. 33:10). Rule ch. 2
 
The key is our offering, our seeking God in holy fear and awe. Our increased prayer, fasting and almsgiving in Lent should enable us to do this with greater purity of heart and soul. Our Lenten asceticism should erase the power of fear and filer out the noise of cynical bystanders. Our spiritual armour and the saints who have gone before us should give us confidence that Almighty God can and will work His designs through us, if but we but give him all that we have.
 
For the faith and courage necessary thus to offer ourselves and our resources to Almighty God for His purposes, let us pray and fast and give alms earnestly in these days, because for God, the answer to the question “What is that amongst so many? is “It is all that is needed,” if indeed it is offered in faith to Him to do with what He wills. +

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