18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A (2026)

Today’s Gospel reading begins by telling us that after Jesus learned of John the Baptist’s death, he got in a boat to be alone. We might wonder, was he grieving or perhaps even fearful? We feel those things, but we would say that those feelings come from an incomplete faith. But Jesus did not have an incomplete faith as we do. So, why did news of the Baptist’s death effect Jesus this way?

In any case, as we hear, Jesus wasn’t given the chance to be alone. The people, unaware of whatever he was processing in his heart, wanted to be near him, and followed after him. When Jesus saw them, instead of resentment or frustration, he was moved with pity. He began to respond to their needs.

Considering all this made me think of how we tend to respond in moments our hearts are troubled. It’s normal to close in when faced with someone’s death or other hardships. And while we should be afforded time to grieve and to process, there’s generally something of benefit that comes with seeking to be of service to others. It’s not that there’s no benefit in withdrawing and going within, but the fact is, when we respond to others in their needs, it helps to draw us out of ourselves and even our pain.

But this is also true for us in whatever ways we tend toward being overly self-focused: my needs, my time, my space, having it all my way. With too much navel gazing, we eventually find that so much self-focus brings emptiness.

As many of you know the word vocation means ‘a calling’. God gave each one of us a vocation to call us out of ourselves for the good of others, regardless of our state of life. Our lives, which God gave us, find fulfillment when they offered for the good of others, when our lives become a sacrifice for others.

The account that follows in today’s Gospel, where Jesus feeds the multitude with five loaves and two fish is meant to tell us something deeper than a mere sharing of food. It’s about Jesus’ self-giving. The miracle of creating abundance out of very little is a prefiguring of what we see on that cross and what we receive from this altar. While looking up toward heaven, Jesus took, blessed, broke and gave. St. Matthew says this regarding the five loaves and two fish, but it’s meant to be understood as Jesus himself. His very body was taken, blessed by God, broken for us and given to us: a life-giving act, true self-giving.

An example of living like this, we find in a saint whose feast day occurs on August 9^th. Born in 1891, Edith Stein was the 11^th child in a prominent Orthodox Jewish family in Poland. As a teen, she abandoned Judaism, declaring herself an atheist. As a university student she thrived, earning a doctorate in philosophy at age 23.

She worked as an academic for the next five years, but then God led her to discover the autobiography by St. Teresa of Avila. She found God in those words, and it led her to become Catholic, a decision which gave her mother great anguish. Still, Edith continued to accompany her mother to synagogue, believing that her new faith in Jesus reconnected her with her Jewish roots.

In 1934 Edith became a Carmelite nun and lived in a monastery in Cologne, Germany. As the threat of Nazi Germany began to emerge and increase, for her safe keeping, she was sent to live at a monastery in the Netherlands. There, she made her solemn vows as a Carmelite and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

As the Nazis threat advanced, even when she knew that her arrest would soon come, Teresa did not want to use her Christian faith or religious habit as a way to hide from her Jewish identity: “If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed”. It’s especially fitting as the day of her birth was Yom Kippur (like Good Friday for Christians). Toward the end of her life, she prayed that she might offer herself the Heart of Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement for the Jewish people. In prayer and free of anxiety, Teresa waited for the end.

By 1940 the Nazis occupied the Netherlands. They arrested her along with all those they knew to be of Jewish heritage. She was forced to wear the Yellow Star of David over her Carmelite habit. In 1942 she was taken by train to Auschwitz, where she died on August 9^th in a gas chamber along with her Jewish brothers and sisters.

But we too, as we live out our vocation, regardless of our state of life, are likewise called to be taken, blessed, broken and given; to surrender and allow ourselves to be taken and blessed by God; to be broken, allowing God reshape us from our fallen human condition; and to be given for God’s purposes…all for the good of others. We are called to be like the Eucharist itself.

In just a moment, from this altar, we will hear that four-fold action described at the Last Supper: “(Jesus) took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples”. The more we allow God to do this to us, the more our lives become conformed to Christ, the more we become a sacrifice, given for others, and the more we will come to find enduring peace and happiness.

Ask yourself: in your life, are you closed in on yourself? Do you feel empty? It could be that you’ve failed to see the bounty that God has put in front of you. In that case, try to prayerfully focus on gratitude. But it’s also possible that God is calling you to something more; some way in which he wishes to take you from where you are, to reshape you, bless you and give you over for something greater. The more we find ourselves able to look beyond merely ourselves, the more we find the One who calls us and thus the more we come to live in His love, a love that overcomes all pain, all emptiness.