The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
I've spent my career living inside spreadsheets. As a CFO, nothing crosses my desk without first passing through the question: what does this cost, and what do we get for it? It's useful for running a business. It's a terrible lens for today's first reading.
"Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!" My finance brain immediately wants to ask what the catch is—nothing is free; there's always a cost hidden somewhere. Yet Isaiah insists otherwise. God's economy doesn't run on my ledger. He isn't offering a discount or promotional rate. He's offering the thing itself: bill already settled, no invoice to follow.
The Gospel gives us the same math problem, and it still doesn't add up. Five loaves, two fish, over five thousand people fed, twelve baskets left over. Any logical person would tell you the numbers don't work. That's the point. Jesus isn't showing us a clever way to stretch scarce resources—He's showing us what happens when we hand Him the little we have and stop doing the math ourselves. The disciples wanted to send the crowd away to buy food, which would have been a reasonable transactional solution. Jesus' answer was simpler and less comfortable: "Give them some food yourselves." Bring Me what you have.
I relate more to the disciples than I'd like to admit. I'm comfortable with a God who rewards effort and blesses the carefully built plan. My worldly experiences tell me that effort = outcome. It's harder to trust a God who says the hungry eat for free, that the exhausted can rest without earning it, that His love isn't something we qualify for based on performance. St. Paul makes that unavoidable today: nothing—not anguish, not distress, not any created thing—can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not our net worth. Not our track record. Not even our own failures. It's not on the ledger at all.
This doesn't mean effort or stewardship doesn't matter. But this week is a good check on the part of me that quietly believes grace must be earned before it's received. God isn't asking me to reconcile the accounts. He's asking me to come hungry, hand over what little I hold, and trust He'll make it enough.
Lord, thank you for a love that was never for sale. Help me stop counting the cost of Your grace, and simply come and eat.
Nick Balser is a husband, father, and finance professional just trying to do God’s will each day. As a native Texan, but recovering Coloradoan, Nick now lives in Coppell, TX with his wife and kids.
