Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B

2 Kgs 4:42-44
Eph 4:1-6
Jn 6:1-15

The multiplication of food (First reading; Gospel) is really about the multiplication and extension of life. The signs that God offers in the Old and New Testaments of his ability to multiply food in miraculous ways are really a message to us about his dominion over life, which is the theme echoed in the Second Reading – the “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

Along with the theme of God’s dominion, we see the theme of human solidarity. The crowd that had to be fed were united with each other in their need. Moreover, even the miraculous solution to their need was not fulfilled without the active collaboration of the boy who gave of the little he had.

The Church’s witness to the sanctity of life is rooted in these two themes – God’s dominion over life, and human solidarity. The God who made us entrusted us to the care of one another. No human choice can trample upon his decision that another human should live, or contradict the solemn duty we have to care for each other rather than destroy each other.