In today’s Gospel, a crowd has been with Jesus for three days. They are hungry, tired, and far from home. The disciples see a problem: there is not enough.
Jesus sees a possibility: someone must be fed.

Seven loaves. A few fish. A wilderness. Thousands of people.
From the perspective of the disciples, scarcity.
From the perspective of Christ, mission.

Jesus does not simply drop bread from heaven. He takes what the disciples already have. He blesses it. Breaks it. Gives it back to them, and they distribute it.

The miracle is not only multiplication.
The miracle is participation.

That is exactly why today the Church remembers Saints Cyril and Methodius.

They looked at the Slavic peoples and many Christians of their time thought: they don’t have the right language, the right culture, the right preparation.
Scarcity thinking.

But the saints saw what Christ sees: God already planted seeds there. So instead of forcing people to come to the Gospel’s culture, they brought the Gospel into the people’s language. They took what existed ( words, sounds, stories)blessed it, and handed Christ back to them in a way they could receive.

They trusted the same truth revealed in the Gospel today:
God does not wait for perfect conditions.
God multiplies what is offered.

We often think, I don’t have enough faith… enough patience… enough courage… enough holiness to help anyone.
But the disciples didn’t have enough bread either.

Christ never asks us for abundance.
He asks us for availability.

When we place our small kindness, our listening ear, our imperfect prayer, our limited energy into his hands, he feeds someone with it. Maybe a family member. Maybe a stranger. Maybe someone quietly starving for hope.

We receive Christ so that someone else may receive Christ through us.

At this Eucharist, the Lord again takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it, and then sends us out.

Like the disciples.
Like Cyril and Methodius.

What we have is small.
What Christ does with it is never small.

~ Fr. Adam Patras, OSB