This Sunday’s readings remind us that God provides for us physically as well as spiritually.

In the First Reading, Elisha assures his servant that one hundred people will be fed with just twenty barley loaves because the Lord has promised it, while the Psalmist praises the Lord who, by feeding us from his own hand, ‘answers all our needs’.

St Paul, writing to the Church at Ephesus (Second Reading), assures the Christian community that, despite any evidence to the contrary, God, who unifies the people, is in control.

The three readings are brought together in the Gospel account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand (which is a foreshadowing of the Eucharist and the only miracle of Jesus that is recounted in all four gospels). Not only does Jesus outdo Elisha’s miracle, he demonstrates that, by feeding the people from his own divine hands, God is unifying the people through meeting their need.

Let’s pray, this week, that we might know ourselves to be in the hands of the Lord, and that our lives may bear abundant fruit as a result.