There are two characters or principles I invite you to reflect on in this Sunday’s Gospel: Philip who said it was impossible to feed the crowds even with “200 days’ wages” and Andrew who saw in the young lad with “five barley loaves and two fish” the hope that feeding the multitudes was possible. It is the half-empty or half-full perspective.
During the summer of 1994, I attended a five-day seminar on lay collaboration in the church conducted by husband and wife James and Evelyn Whitehead. If I am not mistaken, the two were former persons of the cloth. They left, but continued their work for the church giving religious seminars, writing books, teaching and consulting.
Their opening reflection used this Gospel passage from John. I distinctly remember their theme: abundance in scarcity. They pointed out that the future of the church was in lay collaboration—which I agree with 500 percent—and this hope in lay collaboration was borne out of scarcity.
After the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s, there was an exodus of priests and sisters, and a drop in the number of vocations in the priesthood and religious life. To this day, the church has not recovered from this.
It is in this scarcity of vocations, the Whiteheads point out, that we discover the abundance of God’s grace that show us the way to lay collaboration.
I had barely celebrated my first anniversary as a priest when I attended their seminar. At that point, I had developed a keen interest in lay collaboration. In fact, I had requested my Jesuit Provincial then, Fr. Noel Vasquez, S.J., so that I could spend an extra semester in the US and do extra personal studies on the subject and visit Jesuit high schools to observe, among other things, how they were trying to work out lay collaboration in their ministry.
In my early years as a priest, I viewed lay collaboration as a collaboration between the laity and the priests and religious. The very term, lay collaboration, suggests this. It is almost like saying, “The lay collaborate with us, priests and religious.”
Family
As I look back at my years of work and priesthood, I realize that it is not lay collaboration. It is not collaboration between the lay, on the one hand, and the priests and religious, on the other. No, it is collaboration between us, the human family, and God; it is lay, priests and religious together collaborating with God and in God’s work.
This remains a crisis of the church. There is scarcity in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. I am afraid we have taken the path of Philip, “not even 200 days’ wages” will feed the crowds; the crowds who are hungry, not just a hunger of the stomach, but perhaps even more critical, the hunger of the heart and soul.
It is the way of Andrew that allowed Christ to address the situation. The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish happened because Andrew saw in the young lad, in the five loaves and two fish, not so much a solution, but something that could be brought to Christ for him to work with.
We must be like Andrew. We must learn from him that unless we bring what we have and who we are to the work of Christ, the miracle will not take place. Sometimes, often, actually, it is at the point of human scarcity that we allow the abundance of God’s grace to take over.
This is the challenge this Sunday’s Gospel confronts us with. It challenges us to be Andrews and collaborate with Christ in his work that continues to this day, in the context of our life and work, or in our corner of the world.
Andrew co-labored with Christ by bringing the little that human resources could muster, a young lad with five loaves and two fish. Andrew assessed, read, discerned the situation very well.
The Gospel tells us that Christ asks his disciples what they should do with the hungry crowds knowing full well what he was intending to do, the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish. Philip failed to see this and said it was a hopeless situation. Andrew saw it well and came up with a ridiculous suggestion—but, nevertheless, the suggestion Christ picked up, worked with and came up with the miracle.
Andrew prayed (discerned) as best as he could. I would like to believe this made him sense what Christ was planning. When he saw this with the eyes of faith, the eyes of the heart and soul, he came up to Christ, with the poverty, the scarcity of the human situation, and allowed the abundance of God’s grace to do the job.
This brings me to my final—maybe my main point—for reflection. Andrew shows us the Ignatian principle: pray as if everything depended on you and work as if everything depended on God.
Yes, it is pray as if everything depended on you and work as if everything depended on God. Not the other way around.
Fr. William Barry, S.J., wrote an excellent article on this. He pointed out that praying, reflecting, discerning to discover God’s will is our “main job.” As I would love to say, our primary life task is to discover our mission, the meaning of our life; a God-given mission and meaning.
Surrender
The moment we discover his will and mission for us, we dedicate our self to this with great love, great generosity and great soul. Love and generosity, magnanimity, make us selfless. Love and magnanimity make us look beyond our self and see more clearly Christ, his will and others.
We realize it is not us and/or 200 days’ wages that will solve the problem or work out the miracle. We realize that it is Christ who will work out the miracle. We bring the little that we have to Christ.
This is our great challenge as individuals and as communities. Do we view the situation from the half-empty or the half-full perspective? Are we Philips or Andrews? Or as the Chinese view of crisis goes, do we see danger only or opportunity in the danger?
It is not a careless, carefree optimism, but a humble surrender or offering after one has done everything, one’s best and allow God to take over. It is after one has prayed as if everything depended on you and then work as if everything depended on God.
Let me end with a story.
Recently, I was in a meeting for a project. I had recommended to someone a consultant I have known for 32 years and have worked with on and off just as long. He is excellent in the field I recommended him for. He is at the top of his game not just in the country but in Asia, perhaps even the world given Asia’s emerging global role.
In our very first meeting with the group, he sat down and listened intently, asking a few clarificatory questions from time to time. All his questions, when answered, eventually led to some positive suggestion or realization.
After over an hour of discussing, the group was very impressed with his suggestions. Part of what I felt and saw as the source of their satisfaction was the way he worked with the group. He hardly called attention to himself and his skills. He always led the discussion toward the group discovering their own ideas and resources.
When we were leaving and he was shaking hands with the group, very quietly, humbly he said, “I will pray for you.”
I think he has the grace of an Andrew. He will always bring to the discussion the little lad and his five loaves and two fish and allow God to work out his miracle. “I will pray for you.” After all the excellent work he has done, he acknowledges the abundance of God’s grace.
How many Andrews do we have in our midst? Men and women who are able to discern God’s plan and will; men and women of prayer and discernment that allow them to see God’s hand and allow this spirit of prayer and discernment to lead them to seek out the young lad with five loaves and two fish and bring these to God? How many Andrews bring the scarcity of human resources—and these will always be “scarce” placed side-by-side with the abundance, no, super abundance of God’s grace—to Christ and allow the miracle to take place?
Unless we bring the little that we have—the young lad with five loaves and two fish in us—and lovingly offer it to God and to others, the miracle will not take place.
