One of the beautiful things about Sacred Scripture is noticing the patterns and words the authors use to draw parallels and highlight themes. For three Sundays, the 15th–17th, we heard Jesus’ parable discourse about the Kingdom of Heaven. God desires us to pay attention to His words because they directly pertain to us and ignoring them carries eternal consequences. Jesus was clear that even though God sows the seeds of grace and faith, that does not guarantee they will grow and bear fruit: some seeds are swept away, weeds are burned at the end of the age, and fish are thrown out rather than kept. Jesus asks us if we understand this.
St. Matthew, throughout his gospel, lays out Jesus’ five sermons and follows each one with a narrative of what Jesus did. Over these same three Sundays, we’ve heard the follow-up narratives: Jesus feeding the 5,000 men (not counting women and children), Jesus calming a storm, and Jesus curing the daughter of a Gentile (Canaanite) woman. In each case, Jesus does something so subtle that the drama of the action itself pulls our attention away from the dialogue underneath.
Let’s begin with the feeding of the 5,000. After the disciples ask Jesus to send the crowds away, He tells them, “Give them some food yourselves.” Jesus is not delusional; He understands the situation perfectly well, and yet his response is jarring. It should make us wonder: “Why respond this way? Could He not just snap His fingers and have the greatest dinner appear out of thin air?”
What about the calming of the storm? Before disciples boarded, St. Matthew says, “Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and precede him to the other side” (Mt 14:22). Why would Jesus put His disciples’ lives in peril? This was no accident; Jesus was the instigator, in complete control, searching for something.
Finally, let’s consider the interaction with the Canaanite woman. Jesus compares her to a dog – rude. Yet if we understand the covenants the Lord set up with His people in the Old Testament, we see that God has always remained faithful to His covenantal people and shown them His merciful love, which is why Jesus establishes this new and eternal covenant with His chosen people and extends it to all of us as well. This episode offers a foretaste of what is to come, when God extends His covenantal mercy to everyone made in His image and likeness.
In each of these three narratives, Jesus is searching for a response from the people He encounters. He desires more from us than mere attention — He wants us to walk with Him: to be a part of His life, His mission, His kingdom. It might seem we have little to offer the world on our own, but with Jesus, we have everything to offer. Five loaves and two fish are enough. When we don’t want to enter storms, He calms them and gives us the power to get out of the boat. When we cry out to the Lord for help, He desires that we cry out even more. The Lord does not want children with little faith but with great faith — children who understand to whom they’re speaking: the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the one who can do whatever He wills. Our merciful Lord rebukes Peter, who had little faith, and exhorts the Canaanite woman — the one compared to a dog — who had great faith! May we all have great faith so that God can work through us.
