With last week’s concluding words: ‘The Lord is my Shepherd there is nothing I shall want. Fresh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose. Near restful waters he leads me to revive my drooping spirit……He has prepared a banquet for me in the sight of my foes…..’
We now see in today’s Gospel, perhaps a glimpse, a foretaste of this banquet. Sure enough, there are present in the crowd foes aplenty, Pharisee’s, scribes, Romans etc.. waiting for an opportunity to trip the Master up and gather evidence against him.
On this Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, we temporarily set aside St. Mark’s Gospel in order to read in St. John’s the account of the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, and afterwards for the next four Sunday’s, the wonderful, sometimes shocking discourse on ‘The Bread of Life’ (John 6: 1-69). As the Gospel unfolds, we shall see the Lord’s intention to remain with us as our spiritual food, but not only that, we shall see that it is His ‘Real Presence’ — His Real Self, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity that are given to us and remain with us in the Holy Eucharist.
For the last two weeks we have seen the importance of service and mission, and the urgency of Christ’s mission; we have seen the Lord as ‘The Good Shepherd’. Here in today’s Gospel, we see a continuation of the Good Shepherd’s work—and a prelude to the announcement of the Holy Eucharist.
After teaching them at some length, Jesus, in today’s Gospel, is once again acutely aware of the needs of the people. He knows that the people have been there for some time and by now must be hungry: ‘Looking up, Jesus now seeing the crowds approaching said to Philip, ‘where can we buy some bread for these people to eat?’’ He only said this to test Philip, He Himself knew exactly what He was going to do.’ Horrified at the magnitude of the problem Philip answered, ‘Two hundred denarii would only be enough to give them a small piece each’. To put things into perspective, two hundred denarii was equivalent to two hundred days wages. In other words, humanly, the situation is without solution. Andrew now enters the narrative, he informs Jesus of a ‘young boy who has five barley loaves and two fish’, a pitifully meagre amount of food for so many people. But it is enough. With so little, Jesus performs a wonderful miracle.‘Make them sit down on the grass that they may eat’ He tells His disciples; who, by this time in their training were quite skilled in handling crowds, and they arranged the people in groups. The people numbered about five thousand. Then solemnly — for all the evangelists observe — ‘He prayed’— Jesus raised His eyes to heaven and pronounced the blessing — He broke the loaves which He gave to His disciples to be distributed. Then He did the same with the fish. ‘All ate their fill — as much as they wanted.’ Then Jesus commanded that they should gather what was left over so that nothing might be wasted.
‘They gathered up twelve hampers full of scraps’ from the five barley loaves and two fish. An incredible miracle, but He would perform a greater miracle still at the Last Supper, when He would turn bread and wine into His body and blood.
Not surprisingly, the miracle of the loaves multiplied superabundantly excites the enthusiasm of the crowd: ‘This really is the prophet, the one who is to come into the world’ immediately, ‘Jesus escapes back to the hills by Himself’ for ‘He knew that they wanted to take Him by force and carry him off and make Him King’ This was not what Jesus wanted, the time was not yet. This is not what the sign He had performed was about. As Elisha before him, in our First Reading, Jesus multiplied the loaves in order to satisfy the hunger of those around him on the mountain, and they were not just one hundred as with Elisha, but a crowd of about five thousand people who had followed Him to that desert place where He was teaching them. Neither had he twenty loaves, as Elisha had but Five loaves and two fish. The liturgy does not invite us to a comparison of the two miracles — other than God feeds His people. For his part St. John alludes to past events, in particular, the gift of manna in the desert after the Exodus. However, Jesus’ miracle is not a repetition of the prodigy of former years. There is more than Moses or Elisha here, more than a prophet. Jesus is the one sent by the Father to gather all human being’s into the unity of one body, in one Spirit, but not by wielding over them the temporal power of a king — yes He is already a king, but His kingdom is not of this world. Nobody has power over him unless that power is received from above. (John 19:11) Yes: People will capture Him, but at an hour decided by the Father; and then the cross will be His throne of glory.
The multiplication of the loaves occupies an exceptional place in the Gospels; in fact, this miracle is the only one narrated by all four evangelists. To his narrative John adds a long discourse pronounced by Jesus at Capernaum which will unfold over the next four weeks, teaching us about the Holy Eucharist — ‘The Bread of Life.’ The full significance of today’s events is thus progressively revealed.
Today Jesus sympathizes with the material needs of his followers—he fed them because they were hungry, but now he wishes to make them aware of who He is, of what He is. His kingdom was Spiritual not political. He Himself was not just a provider of bread, but as they will come to see; He is the Bread of Life. In other words, He is the one who would satisfy their deepest hungers, their hunger for hope and meaning, for permanence
and everlasting love, for eternal life: ‘Do not work for food that cannot last’ we will hear Him say, ‘but work for food that endures to eternal life.’ Food which ‘the Son of Man will [also] give you.’ (John 6:27). You see, the bread that He gives in today’s Gospel was real bread, which feeds the body, but it was only a symbol of Himself as the Bread of Life. He would later give them the real ‘Bread of Life’— His Real self —his Real Presence — Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.—All they could see at this point was bread in abundance and the prospect of more; what He wanted them to see was, that He had come from heaven from God the Father on a life giving mission and He wanted them to want Him, not as bread maker, but as Saviour — for He was God Incarnate.
In this Gospel today there are clear Eucharistic overtones in the way the miracle is related: Jesus ‘took’ the loaves, ‘gave thanks’, and ‘distributed’ them to the people; such language is meant to remind us who have hindsight of what He did at the Last Supper and what happens every time we celebrate the Eucharist.
Our Lord’s intention today at the multiplication of the loaves, was to give this improvised repast, which might have been taken standing up, the character of a proper meal. The guests take their places on the grass, but in regular order. The Master of the house Himself breaks the bread while pronouncing a blessing, according to the proper custom and the remnants are gathered up as if the meal had taken place in the dining room.
It would be untrue to say that the Sacrament of the Eucharist was in any way instituted that day for the benefit of the whole multitude; but it was certainly, already one of the preliminaries of the Sacrament, given by the Master for His followers to think about.
It was a symbol — a sign of things to come. An outward sign which would lead to a spiritual reality. What today’s Gospel is saying to us today is this:
We must focus on Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour and deepen our relationship with Him in faith and Eucharist: Don’t worry about tomorrow, Our Blessed Lord knows what we need and will give it to us, we have only to have faith and ask — because there is a need in our life, a dimension that no human can supply. The sole supplier of that need, the sole distributor of that need throughout the whole world, and throughout all time is Jesus Christ Our Lord — our deepest and dearest friend.
Ordinary bread will keep us alive for a good while, we hope! But the Bread of Life [Jesus] will keep us alive forever as we shall see over the coming weeks, as Jesus tells us: ‘I am the living bread, which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world’. Amen.
