Preached on the Ms Maasdam cruise ship (Holland America) on a cruise through the Panama Canal

A few years ago, I was serving at St. Joseph's Parish in Addison, Illinois, where the inspiration for today's homily took place. The city of Addison basically is divided into two sections: the more affluent section on the west side of town and the middle to lower class section on the east side, where I served. The people of St. Joe's are great - people are great wherever you serve. But the people are poor nevertheless and the parish offered a social justice activity for the people who attended this Lenten event.

What intrigued me most about this event concerned the meal that was served to start that particular evening. Each person that entered the dining room was given a sticker, colored green, yellow or red (I told people that the stickers corresponded to one's looks: green represented good-looking, yellow represented so-so and red…). Naturally, I was wearing a green sticker). After the opening prayer, the student volunteers shared a meal with all who attended the event in a spirit of service. There was one sticking point to the meal, though: the people with the green stickers were served first, with a first class meal. As the faithful with the green stickers were being served, everyone else holding yellow and red stickers were salivating, waiting for their meals to arrive, only to find out that the people holding yellow stickers were served rice or oatmeal and juice, while those with the red stickers were served bread and water.

Naturally, there were many people in the room that were not happy. "I did not know that we were not all getting the same thing," they started to grumble. I noticed some people switching stickers, claiming that they were not served the proper food. I noticed that some parents with the green stickers were giving their portion of food to their kids who had the yellow or the red. At the end of the meal, some people understood the lesson that was given, many did not like the lesson, and the kids were waiting for the end of the day in order to fly off to McDonald's. I can only imagine the response of everyone seated in the main dining room of this ship if the crew decided to pull the same stunt on us.

As I reflected on this event, I turned to our first reading from Exodus, a story that took place during the chosen people's 40 years in the wilderness, protected by the Lord yet in search of a land that God promised to give them. If you look at the structure of the first five books of the Old Testament, the Book of Genesis generally covers around 2400 years, the Book of Exodus covers the one year the chosen people spent at Mt. Sinai, Leviticus is covered in what we might call "real time," and Numbers spans the great deal of the 40 years in the wilderness. The last book of the Pentateuch, the Book of Deuteronomy, generally covers the last day of the life of Moses.

It is in those 40 years of wandering that the sentiments of the chosen people very much paralleled the grumblings that I experienced at this social justice event in Addison, Illinois. In the story of this Exodus, God promised the chosen people that He would take care of them. What the people didn't realize was that the manner that God was to take care of them wasn't in the form of steak and eggs but in the form of manna and water. Manna was a type of frost that settled on the vegetation each night, hardening into a type of bread that was sufficient to eat. In today's story, we learn how God also provided water to the people in order to quench their thirst.

The fact was, though, that the people wanted more. For those wandering in the wilderness, it wasn't sufficient enough for them just to be fed; they wanted to live the high life. They did not want just bread and water; they wanted meals like the ones served at the Pinnacle Grill. The fact was that the people's direction was led more by their stomachs then by their Lord, a violation of the First Commandment, a lapse in judgment that is evident in our society today concerning what was really important in life.

The story in our gospel reading takes this theme of feeding the needy and reverses the role of God and man. In our gospel story, it is God that wishes to be fed by us, as opposed to man being fed by God. Yet remarkably, the Samaritan woman's response of distrust echoes the same theme as questioned by the chosen people of the Old Testament: if this God is truly the God of all created things, why does God not treat us in the way that we see fit?

That same theme addressed by the chosen people, as well as the Samaritan woman, is the theme of today's homily, a phrase which I humorously recall in the old Wendy's Hamburgers commercial from years past: Where's the beef? When are you going to serve us in a manner fitting to us? For those who have no food, the question is a constant mantra to God. For those who have food, the question is amended: why haven't you provided us with more?

The theme of this activity at St. Joseph's Church was that some people in the world are in great need and it is the responsibility of those who have to support those who have not, in the same way that the love of God pours forth on those who seek this love. The food and love may not be what we exactly desire, but there is more food and love and charity of God to share, with plenty left over.

The fact is that 90% of all land in all third world countries is owned by 10% of the population. The fact is that the people who possess the greatest amount are often reluctant to share their gifts with others out of fear of losing what they already have. If we have learned nothing else from our gospel message, we have learned that God does not feed us with the surplus of heaven - God gives us everything that he has, His heart and soul, and calls us not to focus on the needs and desires of our stomach or eyes, but on the presence of the divine in our hearts. For when we do, when we put the needs of others ahead of our own needs, then the message of feeding those who are in need becomes not just a nice thing that we offer from our financial surplus, but an action that reflects our entire heart given to God in the same way that God's sacred heart is offered to us on the cross.

Now that we have come to the end of this cruise, those who are leaving the cruise ship are no longer dispensed from their Friday abstinence. All of us all called to relive a penitential life through the charisms of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Of all the ways we can do this, perhaps in some small way we can express this penitential life in supporting the three ministries that our collection on the ship supports: the Apostleship's ministry in the poor countries that she serves, on behalf of the Youth Apostolate in San Francisco, or for the poor and needy at the El Centro Vilaseca Daycare Center in Joliet, IL. For when we feed others, we feed our Lord. And when we feed our Lord, what he feeds us back is more than we can ever imagine. For as stated in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew's gospel, when we serve the least of God's children, we serve God as well.

Let us take this message to seeing the presence of God in the hearts of those whom we serve and by feeding our God through feeding and loving them.

This is our prayer.