From Monday's first reading: "The children of Israel lamented, 'Would that we had meat for food!' . . . When Moses heard the people, family after family, crying at the entrance of their tents. . . . he was grieved. 'Why do you treat your servant so badly?' Moses asked the LORD. 'Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all these people? . . . I cannot carry all these people by myself, for they are too heavy for me.'"
From Monday's gospel: "[The disciples] said to him, 'Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.' . . Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds. They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over - twelve wicker baskets full."
De La Salle (Med. 20.3): "After we have abandoned ourselves to God . . . it usually happens that God makes us experience very extraordinary effects of his goodness and protection, as he shows us in the Gospel today: after he multiplied the five loaves and the two fishes offered to him and five thousand people - not counting the little children - had eaten their fill, there still remained a large quantity. Be assured, then, that once you have placed yourselves in God's hands . . . he will help you by his grace . . . perhaps in a way that is not obvious, or else he will deliver you from it by surprising means and at a time when you least expect it."
There will be times when it seems that what is asked of us is one thing too many. As with Moses, it becomes too much. But it is as De La Salle wrote: trust in God, and what we need, even if it not what or when we expected, will be given. One thing to remember from the gospel story of the multiplication of the loaves is, perhaps, even more important. There are leftovers! In what we receive from God, we receive what we need, but even more to feed the children of God who have been entrusted to our care. As we begin our deep dive into the school year, may we be watchful for the opportunities that God gives us to feed others beyond what we might expect from the extra that he gives us for our needs.
Live, Jesus, in our hearts!