Greetings to you. I take this opportunity to thank you for the love and care you have given me while Fr. Jack has been away. Thanks, be to God that he is back from his holiday. When am here at St. James, I feel like I am at home. Thank you for loving your Church. It is my prayer that you continue loving your God no matter how hard it is for us to understand his ways and words sometimes.  Let us remain with Him because He is the best choice of our life. So like Joshua, Let us say "As for me and my house we shall serve the Lord".  Like the Israelites, let us say "We have no intention of deserting the Almighty God and serving other gods". I promise you my prayers.  Amen.

In our different cultures, success can often be a game of numbers.  A successful television programme is one that has a very large viewing audience. If the numbers watching declines, the programme is in trouble.  Democracy is based on majority vote. The candidate with the most votes gets elected. Every political party is anxious to maximise their vote on election day. In all kinds of ways, numbers matter in our society. The schools with the biggest number of graduates going on to University are considered the better schools.  If some event that is organised only attracts a small crowd it is considered a failure. Today’s gospel suggests that Jesus was not too concerned about numbers.  Jesus puts Himself at our disposal. Jesus wants us to look again at our personal relationship with Him and choose to follow Him more closely or to follow someone else.

What a difference our attitude towards life makes to our enjoyment of life. This is the positive approach of one woman: Lord, thank you for this sink of dirty dishes, we have plenty of food to eat. Thank you for this pile of dirty laundry, we have plenty of nice clothes to wear. And I would like to thank you, Lord, for those unmade beds. They were so warm and so comfortable last night. I know that many have no beds. My thanks to you, Lord, for this bathroom, complete with all the splattered mirrors, soggy towels and dirty lavatory. They are so convenient. Thank you for this finger-smudged refrigerator that needs defrosting so badly, it has served us faithfully for many years.  It is full of enough leftovers for a few meals. Thank you, Lord, for this oven that absolutely must be cleaned today. It has baked so many things over the years. Lord, the presence of all these chores awaiting me says you have richly blessed my family. I shall do them all cheerfully and I shall do them gratefully.

UBUNTU is a very nice story from Africa... The motivation behind the Ubuntu culture in Africa... An Anthropologist proposed a game to the African tribal children... He placed a basket of sweets near a tree And made the children stand 100 meters away. Then announced that whoever reaches first would get all the sweets in the basket. Then he said 'ready steady go! ‘.. Do you know what these children did? They all held each other's hands, ran together towards the tree, divided the sweets equally among themselves, ate the sweets and enjoyed them. When the Anthropologist asked them why they did so, They answered..."Ubuntu" Which meant- 'How can one be happy when the others are sad?' Ubuntu in their language means- "I am because we are" A strong message for all generations. Let all of us always have this attitude and spread happiness wherever we go. Let's have an "Ubuntu" Life.... .

Today we see Jesus not doing all the work by himself, he tells the disciples to feed the people. He tells his disciples to make the people sit down in groups of 50. He tells them to distribute the food. He tells them to pick up the scraps left over. Jesus, it seems, is big into management. But then when the disciples do what they are told, Jesus takes over and does great things. And that is the way it should be. If only we did what Jesus tells us then I am sure the world would be a much more wonderful place. But we so often want to do things our way. In this story, we see the limitless generosity of God abounding. Be generous with your time, treasure and talent and great things will happen to you.