2022 Arkansas Catholic Men's Conference

Published: February 12, 2022

Bishop Anthony B. Taylor preached the following homily at Christ the King Church in Little Rock on Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022. It is based on the readings for Saturday of the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, Cycle II.

Bishop Taylor

The nuns who taught me in elementary school were the Sisters of Divine Providence. They named their order after divine providence because they believed that God would provide them with what they needed to carry out their mission, but to us they were Sisters of Divine Providence for another reason as well: God used them to provide us with an excellent Catholic education.

They taught us about God and our Catholic faith while also teaching us reading, writing and math, which we also need to learn. They were Sisters of Divine Providence in two ways: 1.) They received divine providence — God’s mercy — themselves; and 2.) they were instruments of divine providence for others.

In today's Gospel we see God’s providence working through Jesus and his followers. Jesus had taught all day, providing his listeners with an excellent education, feeding their souls, but now the time has come to feed their bodies as well. And how does he provide them with food?

Miraculously, of course, and using what's at hand. Do they have five loaves and two fish? Then it will be bread and fish. As God, he could have provided them with a seven-course dinner out of nowhere, but he wants the people to do their part, so he sticks to what they have. They provide their five loaves and a few fish and Jesus provides the way to make it enough.

And then he changes his disciples into instruments of God's providence for all those people. He blessed the food and “gave it to the disciples to distribute to the people. They all ate their fill ...” And notice, the word “all” includes even the disciples themselves. They 1.) received God's providence — God’s mercy — themselves; and 2.) were instruments of divine providence — men of mercy, the theme of this conference — for others.

You and I are like them. We have also received God's providence: through our parents, relatives, teachers, priests, all the people through whom God has provided for us all these years — and above all through Jesus — and he continues to feed our souls with miraculous bread, bread not only multiplied into more loaves, not merely changed in quantity as in today's Gospel, but actually changed in its very nature, miraculously changed into the very body and blood of Jesus for us to eat and drink, and through which we receive eternal life.

And then God sends us united with Jesus to give our lives for others as Jesus did for us. We are also being not only 1.) to be recipients of God's providence, but also now 2.) instruments of divine providence — men of mercy for others!

In this regard and in response to very disheartening surveys that show declining belief among some Catholics in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and due to declining Mass attendance in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bishops of the United States have planned a three-year eucharistic revival, in which I hope you will participate, beginning this year on the feast of Corpus Christi, June 18-19, 2022.

This revival should focus on all aspects of the Eucharist, including processions and all forms of popular piety, for instance 40-hour devotions, and above all enhanced participation at Mass and eucharistic adoration outside of Mass. The bishops have already issued a guiding document on the Eucharist, which is the greatest experience of divine providence available to us today, building directly on the experience of the 4,000 whom Jesus fed with five loaves and a few fish in today’s Gospel — and then taking it to a higher level.

Not just more bread and fish than before, but rather a participation in Jesus’ very self, body and blood, soul and divinity. And then Mass ends with us sent on mission. Like I said, God sends us forth from this altar, united with Jesus through the sacrament of this altar, to give our lives for others as Jesus did for us, we also being not only 1.) recipients of God's providence, but also now 2.) instruments of divine providence — men of mercy — for others!