St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church recently issued the following announcement .

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time 

The common theme of today’s readings is the provident care of a loving and merciful God who generously shares His riches with us and invites us to practice His sharing love in our lives. God takes care of our physical and spiritual needs if we put our trust in Him. He shares with us Jesus as our Savior and spiritual food, in Word and in Eucharist, thus preparing us for the Heavenly banquet, and challenges us to share our blessings with others.

The first reading (Isaiah 55:1-3): Chapters 40-55 of Isaiah record prophecies concerning the end of the Babylonian captivity, when the Jews would return to their devastated homeland from slavery. Promising fertility of crops and livestock through His prophet, the Lord God meant to give the people hope and to keep them from losing Faith in Him. The people were promised abundant water, grain, milk, wine, and bread — with a renewal of God’s covenant. Isaiah’s prophecy repeatedly assured the people that poverty would not be a barrier to their enjoyment of God’s bounty: “You, who have no money, come.” “Come, without paying and without cost.” “Why spend … your wages for what fails to satisfy?” This would be a reassurance to people who were ashamed of the sins that had led them into exile.  God was telling them that they didn’t have to pay their own ransom, but that He (Yahweh) would do it out of undeserved mercy and love because He had made an everlasting Covenant with His people. Jesus is the fulfillment of this invitation for free meals and drinks in Isaiah 55:1   because he describes himself as Living Water and as Bread from Heaven. Deutero-Isaiah’s vision of the messianic banquet was realized through Jesus’ actions at the institution of the Holy Eucharist at his Last Supper. The concluding sentence explains why the audience is invited to “eat the finest” and “delight in delicacies.” The reason is that in God’s Kingdom, everyone becomes king, sharing the “benefits assured to David.” Finally, the Divine promise of life – “Listen, that you may have life!” – takes on new and fulfilled meaning in Christ’s Resurrection.

The second reading: (Romans 8:35, 37-39): Some of the Judeo-Christians in Rome insisted that the Gentile Christians needed to observe at least some aspects of the Law of Moses. Paul, on the other hand, argued that it was enough to put one’s faith in Jesus and let God save us through His unearned and undeserved grace. Hence, the Gentile converts to Christianity had no obligation to keep any aspect of Jewish law, although Jewish converts could do so if they wished. In today’s lesson from the letter to the Romans, Paul answers the question, “Well, if God loves us so much as to save us by unearned grace, why is everything still so difficult? Why are we suffering?” Paul’s response sounds like a lawyer’s dramatic closing argument in a hard-fought trial when he declares, “neither death nor life…nothing that exists…can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.” For Paul, these are the trials through which we triumph.

Gospel exegesis: The symbolism of the multiplication of bread: The multiplication of the loaves is described six times in the Gospels: twice in Matthew and Mark and once each in Luke and John. The numbers are symbolic. For example, the word “basket” refers to the Jewish basket, and 12 suggests the twelve tribes. The language used echoes that of Moses feeding the people in the desert. The number 5 might refer in some way to the Pentateuch. The location is Jewish territory. The echoes of Moses are important for Matthew’s Gospel because his community had only recently broken from the mother religion of Judaism and would like to claim for itself the fulfillment of what the Mosaic traditions pointed to.

Original source can be found here.