18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A:
Isa 55:1-3, Ps 145, Rom 8:35/37-39, Matt 14:13-21
There are certain moments when I begin to wonder if the internet was a mistake.
A friend sent me a YouTube video and asked for my honest opinion. After watching it, I’m reconsidering both the video and the friendship.T he title was, “Bashar Explains Why Jesus Split Reality to Awaken Christ Consciousness“
Now, Bashar is supposedly a multidimensional being from another civilization who speaks through a gentleman here on earth. I was only three minutes into the video when I learned that I am, apparently, “I am a highly powerful entity walking this planet, disguised as a simple biological being.”
My mother called that being a teenager.
Also, I learned that “I have a core vibrational frequency.”
Well, by this point, I had enough vibrations to reach for an antacid.
Since I had begun, I had to find out where the phrase “Christ Consciousness” comes from. Which was unfortunate. In case you’re wondering, it comes out of Paramahansa Yogananda’s habit of translating Vedantic nondualism into Christian words, which was picked up by Theosophy, New Thought, and eventually TikTok theologians, spawning a whole genre of profound gobbledygook.
It would all be wonderfully amusing if it weren’t so popular.
Underneath the vocabulary sits a very old offer. That can be traced back to Eden. Jesus did not come to save you, it says. He came to remind you that you were already divine. Sin is just forgetting. Salvation is just remembering. No repentance required, no Savior, no Cross. You simply awaken the “Christ” hidden within yourself.
That message is remarkably attractive. I’ll be honest. Some mornings that sounds pretty appealing. Who wouldn’t rather be secretly magnificent than admit he’s starving? Who wouldn’t prefer self-realization to self-denial? Who wouldn’t rather climb to heaven than kneel before the Cross? It’s the easier sell.
It’s the oldest sales pitch in history.
“You shall be like God.” Whispered the serpent in the garden,
Notice how different today’s Scriptures sound.
Isaiah doesn’t say, discover the banquet within yourself. The Hebrew opens with a single shout, Hoy. Imagine a fish peddler yelling over everyone else. And who gets pulled in? Not the enlightened. The hungry. Not the awakened. The thirsty. Not the advanced. The poor. Not people who found themselves. People who know they can’t feed themselves.
That is the beginning of every authentic spiritual life.
The crowd in today’s Gospel has something in common with Isaiah’s audience. Neither has enough. Five loaves. Two fish. Thousands of hungry people. That’s where Christ begins.
The saints were never people who thought highly of themselves.
They were people who knew how desperately they needed God.
The great tragedy of our age is not that people are looking for God.
They are.
The tragedy is that many have been persuaded to look for Him in the only place He never promised to be found—in the worship of themselves.
So bring your five loaves and two fish this week.
Bring your exhausted patience.
Bring your distracted prayer.
Bring your ordinary acts of charity.
Bring even your failures.
Put them in his hands.
The miracle was never that the disciples had enough.
The miracle was that Christ was enough.
The Joy of the Gospel 