Advent: Hunger, Hope, Abundance

Hunger is everywhere in Advent. It hums beneath our schedules and scrolls, behind our griefs and our goals. Isaiah promises a mountain where God lays a feast for all peoples, wipes tears from every face, and destroys death itself. Matthew shows Jesus on a mountain too, healing the broken and feeding the hungry until everyone is satisfied. Between those two mountains; promise and fulfillment; we find our lives: somewhere between desert and banquet, longing and provision, shadow and shepherding light.

The Mountain and the Table

Isaiah’s vision is not a mere metaphor. It is a claim about history: God intends a future in which the shroud of sorrow is torn, disgrace is removed, and death is undone. The feast is concrete; rich food and choice wine; because salvation is not a vaporous idea. It touches bodies, tables, tears, nations.

This banquet echoes in the Eucharist, the foretaste of what Isaiah saw. At every Mass, Christ sets a table in the midst of our foes: fear, fatigue, sin, and death. We are fed not with a concept but with his very life. Advent intensifies this hope. We wait not for an idea to improve but for a Person to arrive, again and again, until he comes in glory. The hand of the Lord “rests on this mountain”; the Kingdom is already among us, though not yet in full.

The Shepherd Who Teaches Us to Rest

Psalm 23 moves us from promise to posture. If the Lord is my shepherd, then I am not my own manager. He leads to rest, not to relentless optimization. In a culture that monetizes our attention and measures our worth by output, allowing ourselves to be led beside still waters is a radical confession of trust.

The valley of shadow has many forms today: a new diagnosis, a pink slip, an empty chair at the holiday table, the quiet ache of loneliness. The Psalm does not deny the valley; it denies the finality of fear. The rod and staff do not remove danger; they provide presence and courage within it. Advent hope is not naïve optimism. It is the confidence that Someone walks beside us and sets a table even here.

Compassion That Organizes: Seven Loaves and a Few Fish

On the mountain, Jesus heals and then feeds. Notice the God we meet: his heart is moved; his compassion becomes logistics. He asks a hard, simple question: “How many loaves do you have?” Seven loaves and a few fish; no strategy deck, no ideal conditions. He takes what is available, gives thanks, breaks, and shares through his disciples. Scarcity becomes sufficiency when gratitude meets surrender and is translated into action.

The miracle is not magic; it is the Kingdom’s ordinary pattern. We name what we actually have, we place it in Christ’s hands, and we organize love. The crowd sits down; community forms; distribution happens; everyone eats. There are even leftovers; abundance that contradicts our fear that there is never enough time, attention, mercy, or money.

Saint Francis Xavier: A Heart on the Move

Today’s memorial places this Gospel beside the life of Saint Francis Xavier (1506–1552), one of the Church’s great missionaries and a companion of Saint Ignatius Loyola. From the Basque country to India, the Malay Archipelago, and Japan, Xavier spent himself to make Christ known and loved. He learned languages, adapted his preaching, defended the poor, and wore himself out with a love that would not stay still. He died on an island off the coast of China, still looking toward another shore where more people were hungry for the Gospel.

Xavier did not begin with ideal resources. He began with the “loaves” he had: a burning love for Christ, a willingness to travel, the humility to learn new ways of speaking, and a tenacious compassion for the sick, the enslaved, the forgotten. God multiplied these offerings. His life is a living commentary on today’s readings: compassion that becomes movement; a table set for those far from home; the God of Israel glorified among the nations.

Between Desert and Banquet: Where We Live

Most of us will not cross oceans for the Gospel, but we all live between hunger and provision. Today’s deserts are real: information glare without wisdom, polarized conversations that leave us wounded, financial strain, anxious children, silent apartments. Many carry within themselves the “lame” and “blind” the Gospel mentions; habits we cannot shake, wounds we cannot heal, griefs we cannot solve.

The invitation is the same: place what is broken at Jesus’ feet and stay with him long enough for compassion to re-order our days. Let him name our hunger and ask his searching question: “What do you have?” Not what we wish we had, not what others have; what we actually possess today.

Becoming Loaves in a Hungry World

• Take an Advent inventory. List your “seven loaves”: time you can offer, skills you can share, a room you can open, attention you can give, money you can part with, prayers you can persevere in, connections you can leverage for someone in need. Ask Christ to bless and multiply them.
• Let compassion organize you. Intention without structure starves people. Choose one act: volunteer at a pantry, write a note to someone grieving, bring a meal to a neighbor, forgive a debt, advocate for the overlooked at work.
• Practice Eucharistic gratitude. Before emails, offer a short thanksgiving. Before meals, pause long enough to remember who gave the food and who lacks it. Gratitude loosens fear and makes generosity possible.
• Keep a Sabbath of attention. Psalm 23 invites rest. Try one tech-free hour a day or a half-day a week. Walk by literal water if you can. Let stillness shepherd your mind.
• Learn a new “language” for love. Like Xavier, adapt. Learn the concerns and idioms of those unlike you; teenagers, elders, immigrants, coworkers far from faith. Inculturation begins with listening.
• Be willing to be “broken and given.” Love costs. Allow your schedule, preferences, and pride to be broken so others can be fed.

Hope That Endures

Isaiah’s mountain is not a dream we invent to survive the present; it is a future God has pledged by the Cross and Resurrection. The veil over the nations has been torn by Christ; the Eucharist guarantees that our hunger will end in a banquet, not in emptiness. Until that day, the Shepherd leads, the Lord provides, and grace turns meager loaves into more than enough.

“They all ate and were satisfied.” Advent trains our eyes to believe that sentence before we see it. With Saint Francis Xavier’s courage and Christ’s compassion, may we become bread for a world that waits; and in the giving, discover that the house of the Lord is already nearer than we thought.