Dear Parishioners,

In this week's Gospel, we see in people two types of hungers: hunger for bread and hunger for power.

Jesus is happy to satisfy their hunger for bread by offering them the bread. M. Gandhi said, "If God were to come to this world, he would come in the form of bread." Jesus is the bread of life.

Every three months the common market in Europe is dumping so much food into the ocean. A few years ago they had to destroy so much food that the destruction cost was 200 million dollars. And just nearby in Ethiopia one thousand people were dying of starvation every day. They want their market prices to remain stable, so the food has to be destroyed. What kind of world, are we living in?

According to the reports of the World Food Organization given out a few years before 2000, the food production has been increased with 2.2 percent every year up to the year 2000 and it is still increasing. Why then do people die in the thousands because of hunger or hunger related diseases? One of the main reasons is that rich nations are unwilling to share their possessions with the poor countries.

When the little boy in the gospel heard about hunger, when he heard Jesus' demand for food, his heart broke through. And instead of thinking of only himself, he was willing to share. It is almost impossible to imagine that only that boy had some food with him. The others were not willing to share. There is more and more bread in the world-basket all the time. The food grains are multiplying at great speed but there is no willingness to share. Only when we share the little that we have, will we discover how much we have left over. That truth can be discovered only by doing it.

Jesus is not happy to satisfy their hunger for power by agreeing to become their king. There are some hungers Jesus refuses to satisfy: the hunger for domination is one of them. He rejects the lordship of dominion, the destructive power of which He sees all around Him. Perhaps Jesus believes that the power which dominates other people is one of that keeps bread from the hungry; a power that steals the community's resources to secure its own superiority.

This is something we are beginning to appreciate ourselves – especially with our massive defense spending. As president Dwight David Eisenhower observed: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed." The power that dominates with force steals from the hungry multitudes. In saying no to the Galileans who would make Him king, Jesus gives us the model of Christian leadership. That is Jesus' challenge to us all.

Yours in Christ,
Father Lawrence