You know, if you’ve been coming to Mass for more than five minutes, you know this Gospel. Five loaves, two fish. We’ve heard fifty sermons on it. We get it—Jesus can multiply bread. It’s a classic story, right?

But if all we do is look at the food, we miss the whole point of the Man holding it.

Look at what happened right before that. Jesus just got the news that His cousin, John the Baptist, was murdered. Humanly speaking? He just wanted to get away. He gets on a boat to find a quiet place to grieve. But what do the crowds do? They run along the shore and they’re waiting for Him when the boat hits the sand.

Now think about that. If that were you or me, we’d be annoyed. We’d lock the door and say, “Give me a minute!” But Jesus steps off that boat, looks at the very people who just ruined His quiet time, and His heart breaks for them. He doesn’t walk away.

Last week, you heard me tell you to get off the fence. You can’t live this faith with one foot in the Kingdom and one foot in the world. And today, Saint Paul in Romans tells us why: How can you not be all-in for Jesus when He is 100% all-in on us?

Paul asks what can separate us from the love of Christ. Trouble? Hardship? Peril? The answer is nothing. But let’s be honest with ourselves today: Jesus never leaves us. We leave Him.

People in our lives will leave. Friends move on. Loved ones pass away. The one constant in this whole life is Jesus Christ.

I wonder in my own life how many times He’s just sat there with a grin on His face, shaking His head, knowing His plan was so much easier than the mess I was making. We’ve all been there! We pick and choose which words of Scripture we want to believe because we don’t want to hear it, we sure don’t want to do everything.

I know I wear Jesus out. We all do! We wear Him out when we lose our patience with our spouses or get frustrated with our kids or our bosses… or when somebody is driving ten miles an hour under the speed limit in front of us and we lose our Christian charity in three seconds flat!

We mess up. Constantly.

But the incredible thing about the Gospel is that after all our bad attitudes and stubbornness, Jesus is still sitting there on the shore, waiting for us. He looks at our mess and says, “You don’t have to go away.”

So, when you step up to this Altar today to receive His Body and Blood—where He physically shows us He will never walk away—I want you to ask yourself:

If Jesus is 100% all-in on you… how all-in are you on Him in your daily walk? And how are you going to show the people in your life who feel broken, defeated, or like they’ve messed up too many times, that Jesus hasn’t given up on them either?

Stop fence-sitting. Hand Him your mess, take His love out into a hungry world, and let Him turn your small, broken offering into a miracle.