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GIVE WHAT YOU HAVE TO GOD Today’s Gospel reading for Sunday Mass is the story of the feeding of the 5000 in John 6:1-15. As the reader may recall, there was no food available to feed the large crowd after Jesus had finished teaching them. There were four possible solutions to this dilemma: 1. Send the people away as the disciples suggested in Mark 8:33-36.2. Raise money (200 denarii which was the wage for two thirds of a year’s worth of work) to feed the people.3. A young boy’s lunch of five barley loaves and two fish.4. Bless and give thanks for what you have, then give it away. Obviously, our Blessed Lord used item 3 to perform item 4. Here we see the lesson of letting God work with what you have: 1. Start with what God has given you (the five barley loaves and two fish).2. Give back to God what He has given you (the loaves and fishes were given to Jesus).3. Obey what God commands you (Jesus told the disciples to distribute the food among the people).4. Conserve the leftovers (the disciples picked up twelve baskets full of leftovers). This event recalls both the widow’s jar of oil in 2nd Kings 4:1-7 and Elisha feeding the 100 men in 2nd Kings 4:42-44. The widow owed unpaid debt, and the creditors were going to come to take away her sons into indentured servitude to repay the debt as permitted by Exodus 21:1-11; Leviticus 25:39-43; and Deuteronomy 15:1-11. While the Mosaic law forbade treating such servants as slave property, obviously indentured servitude for unpaid debt constituted a grave hardship. Now all this widow had remaining was a jar of oil. So, Elisha told her to gather as many empty jars as possible and pour the contents of the filled jar into the empty jars. On the face of it, the command seemed as ridiculously impossible as using five barley loaves and two fishes to feed 5000. Yet the woman obeyed, and all the empty jars were filled. Elisha then told her to sell as many filled jars as needed to repay the debt and use the leftovers for herself and her two sons. This is the same essential story in the Old Testament that exists in the New: 1. Start with what you have (a single jar filled with oil).2. Give it to God.3. Obey what God commands even if it is ridiculous (fill empty jars with the contents of the filled one).4. Conserve the leftovers (use for yourself and your sons the filled jars remaining after repayment of debt). The same thing happened at the end of 2nd Kings chapter 4 when a man came from Baalshalishah, bringing Elisha his tithe: bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, “Give to the men, that they may eat.” Thus, the man from Baalshalishah obeyed and they ate, and had some leftover, according to the word of the Lord. God’s message does not change between Old and New Covenants. It remains the same: start with what you have, give it to God, obey what God says, and be thrifty with the results. Is that so difficult to do?