“There is no need for them to go away”
How do we satisfy our hunger? The disciples in the Gospel suggest to Jesus, who is God, how to solve the problem. How many times do we act as these disciples when we make suggestions to God, telling Him how to solve the current problem in our life or the life of others?
What is it that the disciples suggest? How are they going to solve the problem of a hungry heart? They suggest to the Lord, “dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” Do the disciples give Jesus good advice?
Suggestion One – “Dismiss the crowds”
Jesus will never dismiss us. He will never ask us to leave His presence, but instead is always knocking on the door of our heart, desiring to enter in to our heart and our live. The disciples suggestion would actually separate the people from the source of life. If the people were to be dismissed by the Bread of Life, they would be walking away from the very source that satisfies their deepest hunger.
Suggestion Two – “so that they can go to the villages”
Where were the people? The disciples say to Jesus, “This is a deserted place and it is already late.” Why are they in a deserted place? They had followed Jesus to the deserted place. Saint John the Baptist, a good friend and relative of Jesus had just been murdered and Jesus was going off alone to pray and mourn. He went to a deserted place to find peace, to find rest. The people follow Him.
There is a sense that the apostles are uncomfortable, they are not at ease that the place is “deserted” or that “it is already late.” They are not at peace, but rather are filled with anxiety and urgency. What are the deserted places in our life? These are the times that like the disciples, we feel uncomfortable, afraid, needy. God puts us in these situations so that we can see our need and then hopefully respond by saying, “God come to my assistance.” The disciples are not at peace, and they are seeking peace in the wrong places.
How do we respond in difficult times? Where do we seek peace? There is the tendency of going to others for suggestions instead of God. We are very much like the disciples. We want to discuss the problem and come up with our own solution. The disciples want to get out of the “deserted” place, the uncomfortable and “go to the villages”. They want to go where it is comfortable, back to what they know, where they will be taken care of, or at least, think that will be taken care of. Jesus called us into the “deserted place”, out from where we are comfortable. In the "deserted place" God takes care of us. It is not "the villiage" or government or society that takes care of us, but rather God. God has given us the family, with marriage as its core and He has given us His Church. These institutions that care for body and soul cannot be usurped by any other institution.
There is “An advanced process of secularization that has sought to banish God from society is emptying humanity by uprooting the core values of the family and life, hastening its debasement. The sickness of a spirit deprived of the truth robs man of his humanity, as Romano Guardini predicted. The proclamation of the truth and its liberation have become a vigorous defense of the family and life, threatened today in so many ways. [1] The Church teaches the principle of subsidiarity.
Subsidiarity “is the principle by which those in authority recognize the right of the members of society; and those in higher authority respect the right of those in lower authority.” [2] In America the higher authority, the authority with the power is the government, whether it is the city, state or federal government. That higher authority must respect the authority of the lower authorities of the Church and the family. They must not only recognize the authority of the Church and the family but must not interfere with that authority, suppress it or supplant it. “The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of collectivism. It sets limits for state intervention. It aims at harmonizing the relationship between individuals and societies. It tends toward the establishment of a true international order." [3] The Church teaches that each authority has a certain role and autonomy. The State, Church and family should be in relationship and that relationship should be harmonious, but each has autonomy and authority. Collectivism, which is the “it takes a village” mentality, blends the three, so that State, Church and Family become one. In this model it is the Church and Family that loose both their autonomy and authority and only one institute remains, the State.
What is the role of the family? “The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationship within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society.” [4] The family is not society, but a cell of society. The “it takes a village” philosophy is a subtle and sly way of redefining the family. Who is your family? It is all the people in the village, therefore the village is your family.
In the Gospel Jesus says to the apostles that there is no need for the people to go into the villages. There is no need to go to the villages, because Jesus is God. What can the village give that God cannot. We must remember that it is God that gave us both the family and the Church. What can the villages give us that the family and the Church can’t? The villages can of course give us many good things and need to exist. The village is not the problem. The problem is when we run to the village for our needs and do not place or focus or trust in the Church and family.
Suggestion Three – “buy food for themselves”
This is the third suggestion of the disciples. Have them buy food for themselves, have them take care of themselves. The sin of Pride, turns to self rather than God, it is the attitude that we can take care of our self, that we can “buy food” for our self. It might be true that we can take care of our temporal needs by having a job and purchasing food and other things to satisfy our physically needs. Our temporal well-being is not assured. How many people have “lost it all” and in trying to “buy food for themselves” have failed. Even if we could take care of our physical needs, we can never satisfy our spiritual needs. We will always be lacking, longing, wanting. If the people did go buy food for themselves it would only be temporary, they would hunger again. What is the outcome when they stay and trust in Jesus? The Gospel says, “They all ate and were satisfied.” The opposite of the sin of Pride is the beatitude, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit.” We are poor. We know we are in need. To live out this beatitude, we must first acknowledge that we are needy and second we must not turn to self to provide the “need” but turn to Jesus. We turn to Jesus because He is the only person that can satisfy the need.
Jesus also sets the disciples up by saying, “give them some food yourselves.” He knows they won’t be able to feed the crowd. He wants the disciples to realize their limits. He wants not only the people to trust Him, but he also wants the disciples to trust in Him. Many times as disciples of Christ, we can begin to think that because we are close to Christ, that we have an in, and that perhaps we can take care of people. We are not the source, Jesus the one we follow, is the source. We are just as needy as the crowd.
What are sometimes, when we have tried to satisfy our own needs but have failed? When are sometimes that we have tried to satisfy others and have failed?
Our need must be before us always. For this reason, Saint Mother Teresa had “I thirst!” printed in every Missionary of Charity chapel, all over the world. This is a reminder that we are thirst, we are in need. It is also a reminder that Jesus is thirst for our soul and looks with pity on us.
Saint Dominic would teach his brothers to begin prayer with Inclination and Prostration, humbling themselves before the Lord. During prostration, they would lie down flat on their face and at one part they would pray, “We are bowed down to the ground; our bodies are pressed to the earth,” [5] and “I lie prostrate on the dust; give me life in accord with your word.” [6] These words from the Psalms are a reminder to the Dominican Order and to us that we are in need of assistance. If we are not looking at Christ, we will have no joy and will therefore be bowed down to the ground in sadness. If we do not look at Christ it becomes easy to not worship Him, but rather worship in vain bowed down to the ground.
Satan is our opponent. His goal is to pin us to the ground, keeping both our bodies and souls from soaring to God. In prayer we remember that we are in need of Christ and that it is only in Christ, with the assistance of the Blessed Virgin Mary , Saint Michael, the Angels, the Saints and the faithful here on earth that we can not only keep from being pinned down. We are in need and feel the weight of the world and sin pressing on our bodies, pinning us down to the earth. If we are pinned to the earth, weighed down by sin and the world, we cannot sore to heaven.
Why do we fight? We fight for heaven, for our soul and the souls of others. “To hinder the enemies of our soul from drawing us into sin, we must watch, pray, and fight against all their suggestions and temptations and in the warfare against the devil, the world and the flesh we must depend not on ourselves but on God only; ‘I can do all things in him who strengthens me’ (Philippians 4:13).” [7] Our enemy is the devil, the world and the flesh. For this reason Saint Benedict has in his rule, “Not to fulfill the desires of the flesh,” “To deny oneself, in order to follow Christ,” “To chastise the body,” and to “Not to seek soft living.” All of these phrases in the Rule help us to “stay sober and alert.” [8]