Homily for the Mass for the Convocation of Teachers of the Schools of the Diocese of Fort Worth

Memorial of Saint John Vianney

August 4, 2025
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church
Keller, Texas

Numbers 11:4b-15
Psalm 81:12-13, 14-15, 16-17
Matthew 14:13-21

Sing with joy to God our help!

In our Gospel reading, we see the disciples come to Jesus with what they surmise to be a problem. The disciples tell Jesus, “This is a deserted place, and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.”

Jesus’ response to them is telling. “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.”

Yet the disciples persist, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.” The disposition and exasperated fear of the disciples is not unlike that displayed by Moses in our first reading from the Book of Numbers, “Why do you treat your servant so badly? Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people? Was it I who conceived all these people? Or was it I who gave them birth, that you told me to carry them at my bosom, like a foster father carrying an infant, to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers? Where can I get meat to give to all these people? I cannot carry all these people by myself, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face this distress.”

Just as God heard and answered the cries of Moses, Jesus hears and answers the cries of the disciples. He tells them to bring Him the bread and fish and orders the crowd to sit down on the grass. He blesses the little they have and gives them to the disciples who dispense what they have received from Jesus to the crowds.

Christ directs the disciples to be part of the solution that he offers. They can be part of the solution to this problem if they permit Christ to be the solution and to guide and nourish them. The disciples are able to nourish the people, who cease to be a faceless crowd and become members of a community of believers, with what Christ has blessed and given them, which from the viewpoint of this world seems to be insufficient. Christ, in fact, blesses and offers all that the disciples have to offer — even if it is only a little, it is more than sufficient.

While this miracle clearly points to the institution of the Eucharist, that is the Eucharist which Saint Augustine tells us makes the Church; we can also clearly see that the miracle also teaches us about the effects of the Eucharist that include nourishment by Word and Sacrament and the gift of discipleship.

Jesus hears our cry too. He knows our fears too. For us involved directly in the apostolate of Catholic education, we can hear the world tell us that we do not have enough — enough money, enough resources, enough patience — to nourish all the people who have gathered before us in our schools: students and parents. We can be tempted like the disciples to ask the Lord to send them away so that they can get nourishment elsewhere: public schools, home schooling, private academies, the State, or private interests. Yet, the Lord asks us to bring what we have to Him for His blessing that we might impart and distribute it not to a faceless and anonymous crowd but to His children whom He has directed us to educate and form in accord with His Cross and Resurrection. The problems that they bring and share might seem to us to be insurmountable and our resources too little — but the Lord shows us that it is more than sufficient when we turn to Him and accept His invitation to be part of the solution. It is only with Jesus that we can not only know the true, the beautiful, and the good, but also to share them among us in the peace of the unity of Communion.

Let us not fool ourselves. There are forces in our society that wish to take fathers and mothers out of their natural role as the primary educators of their children and replace them with the state. These are the same forces that very much wish to discredit the Church and remove it from its Divinely instituted role of teaching, governing, and sanctifying the children of God in light of the Gospel of Christ with its accompanying intellectual tradition.

We must not capitulate to these forces because of our fear of the unknown or of insufficient consideration of the mission at hand as being too large for us and none of our concern. Catholic schools are an essential means of the Church’s mission of salvation entrusted to each and all of us by Christ through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In the coming years of Educational Savings Accounts, we must not and will not deny access to students and their parents exclusively because of financial need or differences in cultural or ethnic background. We must make it a priority of ours as the Church. We will not send them away that they might settle for junk ethics, including racist and gender ideologies, in the marketplace of education in place of the nourishment that the Lord offers them and it is their right to receive. We have only to ask the Lord’s blessing upon what He has given us and share what we have been given to share. Let us together sing with joy to God our help!