Multiplying loaves – the abundance of God

This last Sunday’s Gospel, found in all four Gospels, is one of my favorites – the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.

I try to spend a few weekends each month in a rural village in the parish of Dulce Nombre de María. This past weekend I visited Pascuingal, being hosted by Ovidio, a member of the villages’ pastoral team.

In most of the villages they have me speak to the children. When it is the first time I visit a village I use the version of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in John’s Gospel (John 6: 1-13), since it’s a small boy who offers the five loaves and two fish that eventually feed the multitudes. I want to children to realize that they have an important part to play in the church and the world, even if they are just kids.

This past weekend, since the Gospel was Matthew’s version of the story (Matthew 13: 13-21), I got to preach on it at the Sunday morning Celebration of the Word. The first reading is Isaiah 55 – another offer of free food and drink! What a great set of readings.

I started by asking the people if they were hungry. One woman said, "Yes, we’re hungry for the word of God." But I pushed the question and someone mentioned that during these months some are hungry since they don’t have a lot of corn and beans and the harvest isn’t until September for beans and October or November for corn. And so some don’t have enough to eat.

Reflecting on the Gospel I noted that the apostles wanted to send the people away to buy food in nearby villages. When Ovidio and I went over the Gospel early Sunday morning he noted that they were looking at the solution that money seems to offer. Money solves everything, many in the US (and here) think. But one of the commentaries I had read suggested that “the problem is not so much the lack of food as the lack of solidarity.” Or, as Gandhi said, “There is enough for what each one needs, but not enough for each one’s greed.” When I quoted Gandhi at the Celebration of the Word I could see the heads nod in agreement. I read Monday morning that Latin America produces enough food to feed 30% more than its current population. It is not so much a question of production as of distribution.

The reading from Isaiah is really inspiring – eat and drink, without paying a cent. God wants all the people to have enough to eat and when all have enough that is a sign of God’s Kingdom.

And I have seen signs of the Kingdom of God when I visit the rural villages. I always receive a warm welcome; I am offered more food than I could ever eat. In Pascuingal they were delighted to have me taste malanga and macus (chufle), two local vegetables. (Malanga is a root that tastes a little like potato but grainier.) I also left Monday morning with eight majonchos (a type of plantain), a guanaba, two lemons, a guayaba, and a pataste (guiscuil). They wanted me to take even more – including some passionfruit - but I had no room to carry all that. Out of their poverty they offer me abundance!

This hospitality is for me a sign of God’s Kingdom and I spoke about it with the people at the celebration. What I also noticed while preparing to preach was that the words used in Gospel at the multiplication of the loaves and fishes mirror the words used at the Last Supper. As Jesus shares his body and blood with us in the Eucharist so he shared the bread with the multitude and we are called to share with others. Our work to feed the hungry is an extension of the Eucharist!

One of the main joys of visits to the countryside is the chance to visit with people. Saturday Ovidio took me to see his parents who live about twenty minutes away. After greeting his mother, we went out into the woods where we met his eighty year old father Salatiel (cf. Matthew 1: 12), carrying an armful of tall grass to feed his cattle and oxen. he dropped the grass and with both arms extended walked toward me with a huge smile and hugged me. We introduced ourselves, he proudly proclaiming that he came from the department of Lempira and was a son of Lempira (the Indian cacique who fought the Spaniards) but that he had lived in the Dulce Nombre area for decades (probably more than fifty years). I mentioned that I came from Iowa but had been born in Pennsylvania. He immediately asked me if Harrisburg was the capital of Pennsylvania. He is still strong in mind and body.

The next day I went back to his parent’s where we went to the plot of his father’s land that Ovidio is planting with corn (5 manzanas) and bean (a quarter of a manzana). A manzana is roughly 1.7 acres.

We showed me his fields and we fixed part of the barbed wire fence and fed his horses. And we talked about the difficulties of the poor agricultural workers here. Most of the land is owned by a few landowners who often use much of it for coffee or pasture for cattle. And so most of the small farmers have to rent the land – if there is land available. They often rent for a price and then have to give the landowner a percentage of their crop. But one of the biggest problems is the lack of capital. The farmers often don’t have enough money to buy the fertilizer and pesticides needed. (They use about 4 sacks of fertilizer for every manzana – at about $27 a sack.) So the middle men come in and offer them what they need but they have to pay with part of their harvest. They might offer them 400 – 500 lempiras (about $10 - $14) for every carga (200 pounds of corn). Yet when they have to come later in the season to buy corn to eat from the same middle men the people might pay 365 lempiras (about $9) for one hundred pounds of corn.

The silo project that the Dulce Nombre parish is proposing is important but there still remains the problem of the small farmer’s lack of capital as well as the problem of the price of renting land.

As I write this I am again reminded of Sunday’s readings. Our God is a God who wants all to eat. What do we need to do so that all might eat?