Pastor's Weekly Message
18th Sunday in ordinary time, 2 August 2026
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HS
JMJ
My Dear Fellow Saints-in-the-Making,
Joyful greetings in Christ, Who nourishes us in abundance!
On this Eighteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, we hear the familiar Gospel of Jesus feeding the five thousand. Emotionally exhausted from the murder of His cousin John the Baptist at the hands of king Herod’s henchmen, Jesus retires with His Apostles to a deserted place with the intent to pray to His Father in Heaven. When He arrives, Jesus sees a vast crowd in need of the Shepherd. With compassion, Jesus not only preaches to them, but He also nourishes them, miraculously, to their heart’s content. Initially, Jesus’ Apostles tell Him to dismiss the crowds so that they might find food. Jesus, however, responds by telling them to “Give them some food yourselves!” The Apostles balk at what appears to be impossible to their limited faith: how can five loaves and two fish feed so many? But this side of the Resurrection, we know better.
We tend to overlook, inadvertently, a particular phrase in this Gospel excerpt, because we focus on the all-too-familiar number 5000. But let us focus on what Matthew the Evangelist, who was present at the miracle, records: “Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children.” Not only does this let us know that thousands more were fed from five loaves and two fish, but it also reveals that while society might overlook someone as insignificant, Jesus never does.
Nor did the 19th Century American Priest Michael McGivney. Having been born the first of thirteen children to Irish immigrant parents in 1852 Connecticut, Michael McGivney was raised in the Catholic Faith and observed it faithfully, enough to hear God’s call to the Priesthood by attending studies at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland. But Michael was also raised in a time where there was intense animosity even violence toward immigrants, particularly Catholic immigrants, in the United States. It was not unheard of for angry mobs to burn down Catholic convents or even churches. Michael McGivney’s response to this hatred was Jesus’ own response: love and mercy.
As a Priest, he saw first-hand the consequences of anti-Catholic cruelty against immigrants and particularly against his own parishioners. Irish immigrants were very often denied jobs because of their Catholicism. This caused immigrant husbands and fathers to work the most tedious and menial jobs that were also the most dangerous, often resulting in the death of these men, thereby leaving their families without a breadwinner. In his desire to help these families, Father Michael McGivney likely remembered today’s Gospel of the feeding of the five thousand, for he wanted to sustain the “women and children” as Jesus does.
Therefore just over four years after his Ordination, this young Priest gathered eighty Catholic laymen in the basement of his parish church of St. Mary’s to form a brotherhood of Catholic men, who would draw strength in prayer and offer service to the Church and her Priests. And through dues, money would be saved to help widows and orphans of their parish survive and thrive after the death of their husbands and fathers. This was the modest beginning of the Knights of Columbus, which in the past 144 years has grown to become the world’s largest Catholic men’s organization comprising today some two million Catholic men, all who, because of the compassion, inspiration, and intercession of Father Michael McGivney, feed thousands and thousands of poor—men, women, and children—in their communities through their outreach of charity as Brother Knights.
As we continue to celebrate the Semiquincentennial of our nation, how fitting to remember Blessed Michael McGivney—up for canonization as a Saint—on this Sunday, just a couple of days before the Feast of St. John Vianney (August 4), Patron Saint of Priests.
God love you! I do.
In Christ,
Fr. Lewis