Mass Times

St. Brigid’s Parish

St. Brigids Parish BlanchardstownMass Times

Weekends: Vigil Mass (Saturdays), 6.00 pm.

Sunday Mornings 10.30 am only

Weekdays & Holy Days: 10.00 am. (Tuesday,  Thursday, Friday, On Wednesdays Liturgy of the Word at 10.00am. Rosary each day at 9.30am)

Bank Holidays: 11.00 am.

Evening Mass for Greater Blanchardstown Area now on Mondays at 7.30 pm preceded by Rosary and Novena at 7:00pm.

First Friday & Saturday of Month – Morning Mass 10.00 am.

Family Mass on the last Sunday of the Month at 10.30 a.m.

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18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel Matthew 14:13-21

FEEDING EVERY HUNGER

Many of us will readily recall the images on our TV screens of the  devastating famine in Ethiopia in the1980s. The BBC reporter, Michael Buerk, described the horror enfolding as far as the eye could see over a parched land, amid scenes of death and dying all around. Later, through massive fund raising, planes flew over the famine stricken area with enough food for tens of thousands of hungry people. Slogans from the Aid Agencies announced that it took only €15 to feed a child for a month and pleaded for donations –now.

It reminds us of what people will say to Jesus at the Last Judgement, ‘When Lord will we see you hungry and feed you? The king will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you do this for the least important of these, you did it for me’ (Matt. 25). Repeated six times in the four Gospels, the feeding of the multitude attests to the fact that Jesus met people’s real needs. He fed the multitude not with metaphors but with food, not with resolutions and commissions but with so much bread and fish that there was an abundance left over. Jesus met their physical needs in a generous moment, so that having their physical hunger satisfied he could then address the hunger of their hearts. Through his action, Jesus acknowledged that there is a real connection between the hunger of the body and the hunger of the soul.

Both the physical and spiritual needs are God’s concern.

In our first reading (Isaiah 55: 1-3) Isaiah, speaking for God, invites the poor to come, eat, drink and be satisfied. Only after their physical hunger has been addressed are they assured of God’s protection and presence forever. The land of God’s promise was always described in terms of food, the manna in the desert, quail and water from the rock that sustained the desert wanderers in their pursuit of a land of milk and honey. The evangelists recognized Jesus and his desire to feed the hungers of others as Wisdom made flesh. In that capacity, Jesus fed us through the bread of his teaching and ultimately through the gift of himself as the Living Bread in the Eucharist. The weekly Eucharist challenges all who are fed to give notonly of their surplus but also of their substance to feed the hungry of the world, ‘our daily bread’. Mother Teresa said that ‘we have only today to make Jesus known, loved, fed, clothed, sheltered. The hungry Christ comes to us in distressing disguise.

Do not wait for tomorrow.