Choosing Sunday’s music, most people would concentrate on Elisha’s feeding of a hundred people and Jesus’ feeding of five thousand (probably more, since they only counted the men) with five barley loaves and two fish. But you know, and I know, that you’ve got more bread songs than you can use in any single liturgy, so pick one and go with it.

Look more closely at the Second Reading, in which Paul reminds the community at Ephesus that they—and we—are united as “one body and one Spirit … one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.”

What makes the news these days is extremism at either end of the religious spectrum: “conservative” extremists who view everyone else as dangerous and ungodly, needing to be cast out into the darkness, and “liberal” extremists who view everyone else as backward and ignorant, needing to be cast out, etc. And think carefully about the appalling logical corollaries of both those views.

Moderates continue to buck such “us versus them” thinking by coming together in peace and goodwill, celebrating what different faiths and different denominations have in common (which is more important than whatever may divide us) and celebrating our oneness as dearly loved children of God.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make the headlines, but it’s worth singing about. Look at David Haas’s “We Are Called” GIA) or Bernadette Farrell’s wonderful “Alleluia! Raise the Gospel!” (OCP) or Sebastian Temple’s beloved “Prayer of St. Francis” (WLP). And consider Omer Westendorf’s excellent text, “Stewards of Earth” (WLP) on Sibelius’s powerful Finlandia melody, as a positive reinforcement of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si.

M.D. Ridge