Jay Kesler – Pastor of Upland community Church in Indiana – has written a book called Growing Places. He tells how one night he was on a plane descending into an airport in India. As the plane touched down, he noticed the bodies of sleeping people lining both sides of the runway. When Jay asked about this, someone told him these were homeless people. The person explained that during the day, the runway soaked up heat. Then at night it acted as a warm radiator to protect the people from the cold. After Jay walked down the deserted street to his hotel, he saw poverty all around him. Many years ago a middle-aged woman came into the midst of this poverty and injustice. She saw the tragic situation and said to herself, “Something’s got to be done”. She took all the money she had and rented an old building. The next day the woman went around the neighbourhood and offered to teach the children. She used the old building as her schoolroom. She had no desks, no chairs, and no table. That was the way this woman did something to alleviate the inequality and injustice around her. This woman, of course, was St. Mother Teresa. Today her congregation – the Sisters of the Poor – has over 80 fully equipped schools, 300 modern mobile dispensaries, 70 leprosy clinics, 30 homes for the dying, 30 homes for abandoned children, and 40,000 volunteers, worldwide. We often call the story in the gospel today the miracle of the loaves and fishes but maybe a more appropriate title is the miracle of generosity. We have the generosity of the boy who with his gifts of loaves and fishes made the miracle possible. It was a small thing in itself but for the boy it was a big contribution because it was probably all the food they had for the family for a week. Jesus asked him for the five loaves and two fishes to feed the crowd of over 5,000. That’s what St. Mother Teresa did too. She gave Jesus her “loaves and fishes”, and Jesus did the rest. He multiplied them way beyond her dreams.

The story of St. Mother Teresa and the story of the boy in today’s gospel make the same point. It is exactly the same with your lives. Left alone to face the difficult challenges of life especially in today’s world, we are conscious of our own inadequacy and afraid of what the future may hold for us. Every week there are new challenges facing us. The invitation and challenge of today’s message is: “Place your lives in the hands of Jesus; he will accept you and bless you, and he will make use of your loaves and fishes in a way that exceeds your greatest expectation”. Let’s adopt the same positive attitude that St. Mother Theresa cultivated and confide and trust in God that we will get through this situation. We must resist the influence of the media to moan and groan and highlight the negative side of everything. There is a story of a person who begged God to work a great miracle to do something about the inequality and the plight of the vulnerable people in our society. In utter frustration, the person shouted, “Lord, why don’t you do something about this ugly situation down here?” There was a pause. Then a heavenly voice replied, “I did do something. I made you.” It is very easy to sit back and complain about the challenges and difficulties facing our society, our community, and our Church, but maybe we need to get up and do something about it. If we adapt the same positive attitude of St. Mother Theresa, the same generosity of the boy in the gospel today life can take on a different tint for us. Whatever we give him – our time, our talent, our prayers, our sacrifices, our responses – however small or insignificant they may be – he will use them in a way that will exceed our greatest expectations, as he did with Mother Theresa and the boy in the gospel today. Let’s close with a prayer. It was a favourite of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. “Take, Lord. Take my liberty. Take my memory. Take my understanding and my entire will. “Take whatever I am and have. You have given it all to me. Now I give it all back to you. Do with it whatever you wish. “Give me only your love and your grace. With these I am rich enough and desire nothing more.”