Religion as therapy

Today’s readings: Isaiah 55, 1-3; Rom. 8, 35.37-39; Matt. 14, 13-21.

In today’s gospel, Jesus faces two audiences: the people who left the towns in search of him and his disciples, who still found it hard to believe and understand. In an emergency, his disciples could offer no solution but to “send the people away”. Jesus offers his mes­sianic alternative. He saves their day.

There is no doubt that the most significant words of Jesus today are “there is no need for them to go; give them something to eat yourselves”. Jesus offers something his disciples could not offer. He offers an alternative, what today we would qualify as fresh energy beyond the institutional forms of religion.

D.H. Lawrence, writing in 1924, claimed that Christianity was a spent force and he saw no hope for re-energising it. Many today may share the same feeling. There are needs of people we may not be catering for. And yet it remains the mission and mandate of the Church to read deeply what people really need and to meet those needs.

The readings from Isaiah and Matthew show how God’s covenant with us is fulfilled. In the biblical perspective, man’s fullness is both spiritual and material. Today’s gospel in particular shows clearly where the Church is meant to be and what the core of its mission should be. We read of people “leaving the towns” and going to “a lonely place” where the feeding of five thousand people took place.

Many today are nailed down by material, spiritual, moral, and psychological needs. We call it precariousness, the feeling of being unsafe, insecure economically and hence even psychologically. The reading from Isaiah is reassuring and vigorously contrasts life as we face it with its peculiar needs and demands. Isaiah idealisti­cally, speaks of a life of free sustenance. This sounds strange in a culture where all has to be cost-effective.

Isaiah remarkably asks: “Why spend money on what is not bread, your wages on what fails to satisfy?”

Politically and economically, we are all little by little coming to terms with what it actually entails for the entire global situation to be essentially consumers by identity.

The way we spend our money, particularly in our part of the globe, is making others pay dearly. It has been creating grave imbalances which in spite of all efforts seem to be here to stay.

The global crash of 2007, which is still unwinding, was a financial collapse not caused because crops were wiped out but because banks created far too much credit and people got too deeply into debt. We are used to live beyond our means. This is sheer nonsense and we are all paying a price for it.

The reading from Isaiah should be enlightening in this regard, even if he is not speaking specifically about the economy. It is up to us to make the connection between his words and the way we are affected by what happens in the economy.

On the other hand, the meal provided by Jesus in the setting of a lonely place and when evening came, is a prophecy for the simple reason that it may be interpreted in view of the Eucharist. It also evokes many instances that characterise our times and the way we live today.

Prophecy in the bible always provides alternatives, even if these alternatives may have the semblance of idealism. The prophecy of Jesus represents the fulfilment of the messianic times, when Jesus himself did not cater just for the need of people to be healed from their sickness but also to be fed and to be given reassurance in the lonely place they were in.

Many people today leave the faith because the way it is presented to them brings neither happiness nor the solution to their problems. It provides healing for neither the body nor the heart.

We need to rediscover believing as a source of happiness, and religion as profoundly therapeutic for culture and society. This is the meaning today of Jesus’ words: give them something to eat yourselves.