Posted by The WORD in other words (2018) by Fr Randy Flores SVD – Divine Word Seminary of Tagaytay
Friday 2nd Week of Easter
In the movie Babette’s Feast, the French Catholic woman named Babette spends all her money to prepare a true “French feast,” a lavish one, for a household in which she works as a housemaid for two unmarried sisters. Through this feast, the rigid, extremely Puritan atmosphere relaxes and suddenly joy is felt in the air. One of the sisters remarks: “Ah, how you will delight the angels!”
The innocent boy in the Gospel is the only one, out of five thousand men, who brings a “baon” (provision) – five barley loaves and two fish. His family must be poor. The barley loaf is the bread of the poor. In the first place, what is a boy (Greek paidarion) doing in the world of men (andres)? But they want his five loaves and two fish. Like Babette, the boy gives up all that he has. Is he going to refuse like an ordinary boy would?
The Gospel does not tell us. What it says is that Jesus takes the loaves, maybe from the boy himself. Then comes the miracle of bread multiplication, a true feast, a lavish one. The men feast on the boy’s food, to their heart’s content—eat all you can— as there are so many leftovers. The boy? He’s forgotten, just like the two fish. He does not even have a name.
The lesson we derive from this story is that, you can be simple and small, insignificant and unimportant in the eyes of many, but there’s a miracle waiting to happen through you. Go, discover it.
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