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Five loaves, two fish, and they fed five thousand men plus. Give me a break! Isn't there a little grouchy agnostic in some of us sometimes that says, "Yeah... uh...Gimme a break.....Yeah.... OK.... It's a little hyperbole."

It's a miracle! And many educated Catholics get, in my experience, they get embarrassed about the miracles in the gospels.... a little embarrassed. So, today, the acronym is SALT, only four letters, S...A...L...T. And the reason I'm choosing SALT as we are thinking about today's miracle, is that Our Lord Himself called you (You're His disciples. If you weren't you wouldn't be listening to me babbling away here, in a Catholic Church. You're His disciples.) and He says to the disciples, then and now, "You're the salt of the earth." And then Our Lord goes on, in the gospels, Our Lord says, "And if the salt loses its flavor, its saltiness, what good is it? And one of the salty qualities of us believing Catholic Christians is "miracles." And we've got to stop, some of us, including me, we've got to stop being a little embarrassed by them. OK.

So, the S of SALT, the acronym, is SCHOLARS, Bible scholars, solid Catholic Bible experts. And I have three books at home, the three best you can buy. And when we are going to be together on a Sunday, I get the book and I find where they talk about the Gospel of today, the Loaves and the Fishes. And one book mostly concentrated on the fact that it is a reminiscence. When we read this miracle, it reminds the people of Moses in the desert in the Old Testament where he fed the hungry people walking through the desert with manna from Heaven.

And then, the second book said that this is a prefiguring, a foreshadowing of the Last Supper because the same verbs are employed. Did you notice? Our Lord takes bread and He blesses it and He breaks it and He gives it out, as He does with Holy Communion.

The third book was very, very thorough.... pages. And then, the scholar who wrote it said, "Of course, what could have happened was that the people were so dazzled by Jesus' teaching that, as they sat down, they opened their picnic baskets and shared it with other people." And then the sixty-year-old in me said, "Give me a break! Are you going to go..." (I'm talking out loud in my room with the dog looking at me.... I'm talking to the guy who wrote the third book, really a solid scholar.) ".... Are you going to take all the miracles and kind of turn them into a bland humanitarianism, water them down? Or are you, too, embarrassed by five loaves and two fish feeding all those people? Are you embarrassed by Christ's working a miracle?" So much for the SCHOLARS... whom I respect.

The second are the ATHEISTS... agnostics... the grouchy agnostic in some of us some of the time. (That's just being human!) But the atheist, for example, Emil Zola, a famous French novelist... He was also a columnist for a magazine in Paris, and Zola.... (He was a good man, by the way. Zola was one of the few people who defended Dreyfus in that famous trial in France.) But he was an atheist, and he got on a train to go down to Lourdes, the town in southern France where miracles occur to this day, the shrine at Lourdes in France. But he got on a train, many years ago, to expose Lourdes as a bogus fake and a fraud. And he was sharing (Now this is from Zola himself.) the train carriage with a little girl and her mom and her dad. The little girl was desperately sick, close to death. The doctors had given her up as hopeless. So Mom and Dad are taking Solange to Lourdes in hopes of a cure. And Zola said he felt so sorry for these poor benighted peasants, these poor ignorant peasants dragging this little girl to this shrine, this fake shrine. But he got to like the kid, and she got to like Zola. And when they got to Lourdes, he helped to bring her down to the baths. (I have never been to Lourdes, but there are many, many little baths where you can bathe and pray for healing, spiritual or physical.) They brought Solange down, with Zola's help. And the third day, she was healed, instantly, permanently! And they brought all the records to Lourdes with them, and all the records afterwards were checked out. Permanent, immediate, complete, inexplicable cure! Zola wrote back to his newspaper in Paris and said, "Solange was cured, but it can't be a miracle because there are no such things." .... OK. Give me a break!

The medical bureau at Lourdes is one of the three best in Europe. It's not just staffed with Catholics. There are many there, physicians and nurses and experts, who aren't Catholic. And one said, not long ago, that he went through all the records, you know, huge files and records so it's authentic and he said, "I think there are two thousand inexplicable cures. And the Catholic Church..." He was mad! "The Catholic Church only accepts sixty-two of them!" ....because the Church has to be so careful that we don't look like gullible dopes.

And the last name I want to say under "A" (And I guess in the back of my skull, I am always thinking of young men and women in college, some name they can hold on to when it comes to miracles... ) Alexis Carrel, Nobel-prize-winning scientist. Carrel went to Lourdes to check everything out, read the records, no faith, no "I'm all being brainwashed," no.... sceptical scientist, Nobel Prize winner. Not only, after studying Lourdes, the town in southern France and the healings, did he become a believer, he became a Catholic. So you're not a dope or a jerk to believe in the miracle.

And the third (We're half done.), the "L" of SALT is LETHARGIC, you know, lethargy. "Oh, miracle, shmiracle... Who cares? I'd like a donut and a cup of coffee! I don't live in Lourdes. I'm not sick. What Jesus did two thousand years ago is wonderful..... Ho hum..." And, over the years, when I was lucky enough to be a teacher, I came, naturally (People use their brains.)... I came across five different breeds, or brands, of lethargy among Catholics, when it comes to miracles. Now, I want you to pretend that these five people are there at this miracle. You know, go back two thousand years and they are sitting there. They are watching all these people getting the food....

Number 1 is "Skeptical Sammy." Skeptical Sammy: "What are you saying to me? You're saying, what's the rumor going around here, that he started out with a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread and now everybody's eating? Ha Ha Ha! Yeah, yeah! Tell me another. Look! He's a con artist. They got dozens of hampers hidden behind the bushes, and you're not going to tell me this is a miracle." When I was a kid I used to think, you know when I was at Mass on Sunday, that when Our Lord taught or did a miracle the people were in awe. No-o. Human nature is human nature. Many of them were saying, "Aw-w, the wife dragged me to this carnival. I don't know what I'm doing here...."

Second is "Grouchy Gilda." Grouchy Gilda: "Now He feeds us? I've been starving all day long! I don't see any liquid refreshment. Did anyone get Manishewitz?"

Number three is "Paranoid Polly."... "Dear, don't you eat a bite. This man has important political enemies. Many of the Pharisees and Scribes don't like him and they don't like people who follow him around. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in this crowd there aren't people taking notes as to who is gobbling down the food. Don't touch it!"

You know I am exag.... These are cartoons, but....

"Economic Elmer" is number four. Elmer says, "Ah! Another free feed! We've got to keep track of this guy. Hear he does this fairly often. When he's out of food, we're out of here!" And that's one of the reasons, although this is a silly cartoon version, that's one of the reasons, as you know, in the gospels, when Our Lord heals many people, Our Lord says to them, "Be quiet. Don't talk about it. Be quiet. Don't make a big fuss." because he didn't want people to follow His teaching just because they saw dazzling wonders. But dazzling wonders were part of His work. Today, it says, the only reason He did it, He was moved with pity. "All these people, tired out, they followed me all day and now they're hungry."

And the last one is "Wiseacre Willy." "Yeah. Everybody's eaten, and it looks like it is free.... Free! Wait a couple of seconds. Any minute, they'll take up a collection. No such thing as a free lunch!"

The lethargic approach to miracles is part of human nature if it doesn't involve us immediately. That's just human nature. But there shouldn't be lethargy when we hear a gospel as we do today.

And the last letter is T (SALT), TESTIFIERS, those who testify. When the people who put together the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.... You know that most of the time in the early days, it was passed on by word of mouth, by eye-witnesses. And the Apostles and the disciples would sift through a lot of the junk stories and toss them out as false, and retain what the eye-witnesses could attest to. And many of them lived long, long lives. So when they put together Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it had to be authentic, passed by word of mouth, witnessed testimony.

Now, when they finally collated all of these documents, after orally passing them down, there were lots of stories that were passing around at the same time, you know, little gospels. One of them was this one. It is very short. Our Lady is washing dishes in Nazareth, and she looks out the window, and there is little Baby Jesus, making mudpies. And Baby Jesus has one mudpie and He breathes on it. And suddenly it takes wings and flies away as a robin. And Mary smiles. Now, when they got copies of stuff like that to put in the New Testament, they threw them out! I wouldn't have. I would have said, "Hold onto that one. Kids will love it! It's a winner. We can make a Disney video." No. No. It had to be authentic, witnessed by people, history. And that's a good testimony that we can trust and not be embarrassed by it.

I am always waving books at you, but I am waving this one because it is paperback and it is not huge. It's C. S. Lewis, the convert. It is called "Miracles." He takes every rational, intellectual, psychological and historical objection to miracles that the most sceptical character could come up with, and he answers it, line by line by line, using brains and history. And the only premise you have to go along with is there is a god. There is a god. He can alter nature, because he made it. He can accelerate it. He can telescope it. He can work a miracle.

And the last thing among testimony, TESTIFIERS is Tom. (And I always check with these people, that I can tell you.) Tom was a student of mine, and he was legally blind, even as a senior. He has made seven trips to Lourdes, and he is still as blind as ever. And, according to his sister, he is planning an eighth trip. And I wish I could tell you that Tom offers it up, serenely. No! He is an awful grouch and a grump, mad at God regularly. But when he goes to Lourdes, he has memorized the number of steps you have to go down with wheelchairs to bring people down to those little pools, those little baths so they can bathe. He has memorized the number of steps, and he spends all his time there, bringing them down, talking to them, answering their questions, keeping them company. And one of his sisters says, "Oh, Tommy is going to go back to another silly trip to Lourdes." But his other sister says, "Oh, yeah, but when he comes home, he is so pleasant for six months." ....Which, in a way, I guess is another form of a miracle.

I have got to add one last letter. It's very short.... "y".... SALTY. YOU.... YOU.... YOU.... I am going to clam up for a minute, and I want you to think over your lives, even the youngest of you. And was there something that happened that Emil Zola would snort, "Coincidence!" that you, looking back, wonder, "Was it just a coincidence that this thing happened, or was it a small miracle?"

There is a list of victim volunteers who drive me to and from church on the weekend, and one of the ladies, a few weeks ago, was just talking. And I asked her questions about the family. Every family has joys and sorrows and stress. She was just answering my questions and, as she was driving, suddenly it was as if she were talking to herself. And she said, "You know, I have started to pray out loud when I am alone in the house, preparing a meal or working on a project. I have started to pray out loud for help. And somehow, there is an alchemy when you pray out loud. There is a certain alchemy. There is like a chemical goodness that happens. It's as if I really own a prayer when I pray out loud. Why, just a couple of weeks ago, there was one day there were several small mir-a-c, mir-...." and she stopped, not the car, but what she was saying, and then she finished , "... There were several small, not so small, miracles that day." I got out of the car. As Flannery O'Connor once said, "She cheered me considerable!" Bad grammar but you get my point... "She cheered me considerable!"

Give me a break! It can be a snort of scepticism, which is human. It can be a sigh of semi-despair. Or, after two thousand years of listening to Jesus and hearing the gospel and its power, give me a break.... I know Lord that life is supposed to carry the cross but I've been praying persistently and patiently for a long time and could you work a little tiny miracle? Could you "give me a break?!"