July 26, 2009 - Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time  - Fr. John Yonkovig
“There is a little boy here with five barley loaves and two fish.” Eric Zorn is a writer for the Chicago Tribune. One day his work took him to Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. He writes that suddenly he sees this 50 year old man who turns out to be Dennis Dunn pulling up in his Ford Explorer. He is dressed in a blue sports jacket and he gets out of his vehicle holding an empty coffee can with a slit in its plastic lid. He begins begging money from the street people. The reporter says it was one of the craziest things he had ever seen in his life.

Dennis Dunn then begins to explain to the people that he works for Making Choices - a Catholic prison ministry that provides guidance and support for juveniles who had been released from detention centers but who still had to attend regular meetings. To get to these meetings many of these young people had to cross dangerous gang boundaries. So volunteers began picking them up and transporting them to the detention center in an old broken down van. When the van conked out, Dunn took it upon himself to solicit money to buy a new van. At first, he used the empty coffee can as a gimmick to solicit funds in his own affluent neighborhood. Then one day his wife Nancy suggested that ideally some of the money should come from the neighborhood people who would see the van drive up and down the streets with the kids. Everyone needed to be part of helping these kids. So Dunn began soliciting money from the street people. At first the people turned away in disbelief. But when Dunn persisted and explained that the funds were to help kids stay out of jail, they stopped and listened. A waitress at Edna’s Soul Food Restaurant emptied her tip apron into his can. A homeless person emerged from a doorway and dropped a few sticky coins into the can. Dennis Dunn said, “No matter what you may hear, these neighborhoods are filled with people who care.”

What Dennis Dunn did is exactly what Jesus did in today’s Gospel. Jesus involved others in the miracle of feeding the hungry. He involved his disciples and the boy with five loaves. Without the young boy’s bread and fish how would Jesus have been able to feed the thousands?
Edward Hale once said, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, let me not refuse to do the something that I can do.” Dennis Dunn was one person who made a difference and he made it possible for so many others to do the same - to get involved - to raise money to help young street kids. Dennis Dunn was so much like the young boy in the gospel who merely had a few loaves of bread but a very grateful heart.

This weekend we will be having our annual parish picnic. One of the great workers on this picnic was Betty Aabye. As you know she died this month. Betty was a woman who had great faith and determination. She was not a native of the parish or of the area - she was born in Baltimore. Married a sailor and so lived around the world. At one time she worked with troubled children in Vermont. When she moved here a few years ago to be with her daughter Sharon and her grandson Joseph, she really knew very few people. But what she did know was that God wants us to live life and to live it to the full…to be loving and compassionate and grateful. She was very active here behind the scenes - always trying to bring people together - to create bonds of faith and love between people. She suffered terribly from arthritis - she was a Eucharistic Minister and I suspect with great pain her crippled hands held the chalice with Christ’s blood. But complain she never did. In her frequent stays at our hospital her target was always to get out of her sick bed so that she could be back here at church for Sunday Mass. Again, I think of Betty today because of the young boy in the gospel with the five loaves and two fish. We all have been given something in this world - maybe not much - maybe a great deal - but the question of life is what we do with what God gives us. Gratitude is the first and most important response. Jesus gave thanks the gospel relates over the loaves and fish - gratitude is the core attitude of the Christian. When one is grateful one becomes generous. You rarely meet a grateful person who is not generous and joyful. You will never meet a happy miser.

Jesus wants to work miracles for the hungry and the needy of our time, just as he did in his time. Miracles happen when a little boy gratefully presents what he has to the Lord - multitudes are fed. One young person was key to this miracle. There are hundreds of us here at Mass today…imagine the miracles that we can be part of - it only takes a grateful and trusting heart. “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, let me not refuse to do the something that I can do.”