Friday 2nd week of Easter
"Jn 6:1-15"
Seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, "How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?" This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, "Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?"
"There is a lad here..." We don't know the name of the lad. We only know that he had five loaves and two fish and that he gave them all. This anonymous lad gave them (and us) a lesson in how to be generous. What we can give to God is always little, but He multiplies the effect of it. Jesus doesn't 'need' our help, but He wants to need our generosity.
It is like a mother who lets a 3-year-old child help her bake a cake: beating the eggs, for instance. She could do it herself, of course (probably quicker and better) but she is teaching and having a great time with her child. And she loves it when Dad comes and the little one says, "We made your favourite cake!" Dad surely knows the child did very little, but he likes the cake all the more for it.
When St Josemaría was a young priest and still no one had joined his Work (Opus Dei), he used to meet a beggar-woman next to the church. In those days he was extremely poor. One day he approached her and said, "My daughter, I have no money to give you. All I have, I give it to you," and making the sign of the Cross, he gave her a blessing. Finally he added, "I beg you to offer up what you can for an intention of mine." The intention was his 'Work'. A couple of months later St Josemaría found the woman dying from tuberculosis in a hospital he used to visit. "But how come... what happened to you?" he asked on seeing her. She replied, "Don't you understand, father? You told me: "Offer up what you can". I didn't have anything to offer up... So I offered up my life!" St Josemaría was deeply moved and never forgot the generosity of that woman whom he called 'the first vocation of his future daughters.' Mother, what I can give to Our Lord is very little, but help me to give it all.
