July 26, 2009: 17th Sunday Ordinary (B)
On Monday, I was at Schlotzsky's Deli with a priest friend of mine for lunch. We were surprised to find that there are now three different sizes for their round sandwiches--small, medium, and large. The small looks like a cookie-size, the medium fits on both palms of my hands, and the large looks like a 10" pizza. Now with the economy, we're again looking for value--more quantity per dollar. So I got the medium sandwich which fit on the both palm of my hands. We don't super-size our meals anymore because as one of our parishioner said what's 5 minute in your mouth will end up 5 years on your hips. Yet my sandwich turns out has 930 calories. I'm glad I didn't get the Deluxe large sandwich, which has 1,800 calories; that is almost equivalent to entire day's calorie requirement. So more quantity for less money is not necessarily good for us.
Later that day, I got to use two palms of my hands again. This time, instead of a deli shop, I was in a neonatal intensive care unit at a hospital. There gathered around an incubator, were the parents, young children, relatives, and hospital staff. The father of the family was holding a tiny premature baby that was about the size of two palms of my hands. He let me hold the baby for a minute. She was still breathing with best of her efforts, but the prognosis wasn't good. I said a blessing for the baby and the family. There were no dry eyes in that room.
On my way back from the hospital, I thought about how tiny that baby was. This baby did not smile or cry like a full-term baby; from the sight of the world, this baby has not tangibly contributed anything to the economy or to the society. If anything, this baby has cost the health care facility and the family a lot of money. If we were to look at this child from the worldly categories such as contribution, efficiency, and value, we won't see it. Yet, for her mom, dad, brothers, and sisters, this child was someone precious to grieve over. In order to see who this child really is, we have to go to the realm of mystery--where the worth of something is not measured by its size or statistics, but by love--which cannot be measured by modern scientific equipment.
In today's gospel, we see a small boy from a poor family in the midst of a crowd who came to hear Jesus. He brought his lunch that his mama packed for him. In his lunch sack, there were barley loaves and fish. I'm sure these barley loaves weren't any larger than two palms of his hands. When asked to give up his lunch, he did so generously. I wonder if this little boy even thought through what this gesture would cost him, unlike most of us who can calculate profit/loss or benefit/cost ratios with our spreadsheets. Yet that tiny gift of love is transformed by God to something greater than itself. This whole passage is well summed up by Mother Teresa: "It's not how much you give, but how much love you put in giving it. To God, nothing is small. The moment we decide to give, God makes it infinite."
Every Sunday we wait over an hour in this church, fighting our fidgety children and fighting our constant distracting thoughts of better things we could be doing on such a lovely Sunday. And at the height of this hour we come to the front to open our two palms of our hands, and all we get is a tiy white host. To those who see it with worldly categories they'll complain, "Is this all I get for all this effort I put in?" But to those who see through the mystery, they will see the infinite love placed in their two unworthy palms because Someone decided to give all He had.
