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Lifelong Catechesis

Forming Catholic identity across generations
November 09, 2024
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Sunday Readings and Backgrounds

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading I : 2 Kings 4:42-44

Give it to the people to eat.

  • In the first reading, the prophet Elisha shows great faith in the power of God.
  • Elisha insists that everyone will be fed with an obvious insufficient amount of food.
  • The true nourishment of the prophets is God’s word which overflows and nourishes all around them.

Reading II : Ephesians 4:1-6

Bear with one another lovingly.

  • The unity given to Christians through one Baptism in Christ is the subject of today's passage from the Letter to the Ephesians.
  • Christians are one Body in Christ.
  • This unity is exemplified by Christians living in peace.

Gospel : John 6:1-15

Jesus gave the people all the food they wanted.

  • The miraculous feeding in today's Gospel provides a glimpse of the heavenly banquet, where there will never be hunger again.
  • The early Christians recognized in this miracle that hunger for life is the hunger that Jesus satisfies.
  • This story of the multiplication of the loaves becomes the symbol for Jesus' Eucharistic feeding of his disciples through the ages.