QUALITY
OF LIFE.
SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME. YEAR B.
July 30, 2006
(1st. Reading 2 Kings 4:42-44) (2nd. Reading Ephesians 4:1-6)
(Gospel John 6:1-15)
QUALITY OF LIFE.
There is always room to improve the quality of our life(1).
Indeed, most of us are not happy with just any kind of life, rather
we want to reach the highest quality of life for ourselves.
When it comes to improving the quality of our life we need to answer
two questions,
first, what gives quality to our life, and secondly how we maintain
said quality.
Saint Paul in his Letter to the
Ephesians (Second reading) gives us the answer to the first question.
What gives quality to our life is living "in
a manner worthy of the call" we have received from the Lord Jesus,
living "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing
with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the
spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one spirit"
(Ephesians 4:4-1).
A life of the highest quality, therefore,
is:
- A life of humility,
that is, a life that makes us realize that we, human beings are all
equal. True humility is the recognition of our equality as members of
the human race(2).
- A life of Gentleness,
that is, a life of mutual respect for one another. Gentleness is the
courage to respect one another.
- A life that allows us to have patience
whenever our efforts to bring about equality are not immediately fruitful.
- A life where we support one another,
we bear with one another, we serve one another in our efforts to strengthen
the unity among us, in other words, demonstrating in actions the love
among us. Christian love, then, is the realization of the unity among
all human beings.
- A life of peace, that
is, a life that moves us to constantly grow and build ourselves as human
beings, collectively, with no harm to anyone. It is a life where we,
of our own volition, are moved to offer all we are and all we have for
the well being of our fellow human beings.
The answer to the second question
(How do we maintain the quality of life?) is found in today's gospel.
The gospel begins describing that a large crowd follows Jesus. The people
in the crowd are motivated by what Jesus has to offer, by wanting to
receive what Jesus has to give. And, this is the answer to our second
question: We maintain the quality of our
life by following Jesus, by wanting what he has to offer,
by receiving what he has to give. If we bring to Jesus our desire (no
matter how small) of wanting to improve the quality of our life, the
Lord Jesus will multiple, will enhance the quality of our life, just
as he multiplied the five barley loaves and the two fish.
A Miracle To Enhance The Quality Of Our Life.
The gospel presents us with a miracle where the multiplication of material
food is a fact which allows us to believe that Jesus can also multiply
our faith and multiply the goodness in our lives. It is crucial in the
gospel the statement from Andrew: "There
is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good
is this for so many?". The Lord, however, multiplies
what is insignificant and feeds thousands of people.
Our world today seems to be intent
on destroying the true quality of human life by openly
or covertly fomenting aggression, abuses, conflicts, wars, selfishness,
inequality; by destroying life, fostering division, embarking on global
domination.
In a world like this, we, Christians and people of good will, must present
to the Lord Jesus whatever willingness and faith we have to be used
in the restoration of the quality of life for all human beings. (And
whenever we feel tempted to say "my work is insignificant"
or "I have little faith", we must think of the boy who had
only "five loaves of bread and two fish").
The Lord then will enhance and multiply our energy, our faith, and our
quality of life. And the world will end up with the highest quality
of life for every human being.
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Footnotes.
(1) For most people, the concept of "quality of
life" usually refers to an improved level of physical or mental
health which allows a person to go on living with a comfortable or acceptable
degree of self sufficiency and a minimal level of pain. This concept
reduces "quality of life" to the category of a medical term.
The concept of quality of life, however, has a much broader significance
as it encompasses all the aspects of human life, i.e. physical, mental,
spiritual, social, economic, political. When we speak of quality of
life, we consider life as a manifestation of the relations between human
beings and between human beings and God. It is in this broader significance
that we use the term "Quality of Life" in this homily.
(2) The cultivation of the humble heart is the surest
way to attain the highest quality of life, the divine life.
