Years ago, I read about a man who survived one of the most brutal settings of WWII as a prisoner of war in Thailand on the banks of the Kwa Noi River. If you ever saw the movie, Bridge Over the River Kwai, then you may recognize his story. Ernest Gordon worked on what was known as the infamous “railway of death,” which the Japanese were building to advance their drive into India and Burma.
Over 12,000 allied prisoners died of starvation or brutality building that railway. Toiling from dawn to dusk, they worked bareheaded and barefooted in temperatures as high as 120 degrees in the sun. Men staggered to their assignments burning with fever. If they dropped in their tracks, their comrades left them behind to be picked up at day’s end to be carried back to the camp.
Any prisoner suspected of faking an illness was tied to a tree, beaten and left exposed to the tropical sun and insects. As horrible as that sounds, the prisoners’ worst enemy wasn’t the Japanese or the hard life they had to live.
Their worst enemy was themselves. Fear of the Japanese made them paranoid. The law of the jungle took over. They stole from one another; they mistrusted one another, and to win favor from the guards, they snitched on one another. The guards laughed, seeing how the once proud soldiers were now destroying one another. Morale hit rock bottom.
Finally, two enlisted men, whose faith in God enabled them to keep their honor and integrity, gathered together the few Bibles they could find and organized a prayer group. Meeting at night, the group started out with a dozen men but before long, the group grew to hundreds. They dared to share their faith and that changed the lives of many.
Through their readings and discussions, the men came to know Jesus. They discovered that he too was often hungry, he too was often bone weary, he too was betrayed, and he too had been beaten mercilessly.
After awhile, the prisoners stopped thinking only about themselves as victims. They stopped snitching on one another. Nowhere was the change of heart more evident than in their prayer time together.
They began to pray not so much for themselves but for one another. And when they prayed for themselves, it was not to gain something but to release some new power they felt within themselves. Before long, they began to sing hymns. This made their darkness come alive with hope. The difference between those joyful voices and the dread silence of months past, according to Gordon, was the difference between life and death.
I was moved by that story for the transformation of an entire prisoner of war camp by the faith of two men bears a striking resemblance to what happened in this gospel. Like the two men who did all that they could, we meet a boy who did all that he could, generously offering what little he had, five barley loaves and two fish. Jesus then gave thanks and passed them out to those who were reclining.
What Jesus did for the hungry crowd of more than 5000 and for the prisoners of war, he wants to do for people today. He wants to feed the hungry millions and he wants to transform the angry millions. And he wants to feed you and me.
If God is to feed us, we must first consider what the crowd did. They gladly received what Jesus offered them. To the skeptic, the words we hear in the celebration of the Eucharist make little sense for they speak of a mystery that cannot be rationally explained any more than the miracle of today’s gospel can be. Even if we listened, can we say that we have been fed when we leave here?
Hopefully, your answer will be yes, but if not, then I invite you to prayerfully explore why you aren’t being fed. Are you refusing to hear all that Jesus has to say and be changed as the prisoners were? If so, then you could be missing the sign of a generous God in our midst. If we listen selectively to what Jesus has to say in scripture and through the Church, then his message would make little sense.
Instead of just listening to these readings, ponder what you can do. One outstanding detail in John’s account of this miracle is Jesus’ command to gather the fragments of bread, so nothing will be wasted. This command can also serve as a reminder for us not to be wasteful. It is easy for us to be wasteful without realizing that what we might discard could be someone’s treasure. Are there things you don’t need or want that could be donated to Good Cheer or our 3 P’s bins?
While we can’t turn five loaves and two fish into a meal to feed all the hungry, we can use what we have to help those less fortunate than we are. What you give of your treasure and time can transform the lives of others and yours for God indeed works marvels through ordinary people.
Another prisoner, namely St. Paul, whom we heard today, urges us to live life humbly, meekly and patiently, bearing with one another through love. If we seek to be fed, then we should do as Saint John Paul once suggested to some young adults, “Place your lives in the hands of Jesus. He will accept and bless you, and he will make use of your lives in a way that exceeds your greatest expectations.