This week, and the for the next four weeks, we will be hearing not from the Gospel of Mark, but rather from the Gospel of John, specifically the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. Today we heard of the “Feeding of the Five Thousand.” While this miracle takes place in all four Gospels, it gets a little special treatment in John’s Gospel, for John adds several details to this story that we don’t hear in the other three Gospels. First, the mention of a “large crowd” in the Gospel of John is actually rather unusual. While we had been hearing for the past several weeks about a crowd constantly following Jesus, in John this is somewhat new. This miracle follows several other healing miracles of Jesus, and John mentions the crowd now to emphasize that they were following Jesus, not out of devotion and faith, but out of curiosity as one would follow a famous person about.
The fact that these events took place near Passover is most interesting because it causes us to consider later even more significant events at Passover, namely the Last Supper and the Institution of the Eucharist. This miracle, this meal serves as a prefigurement of the Last Supper and the events leading up to the Lord’s Passion.
Now, while there are many many character’s present in this scene, I want to draw your attention to one specific character, and that is the boy who presents the original five loaves. John specifically notes that these are barley loaves. Barley was the bread of the poor. The wealthy had wheat, while the very poor ate barley. Thus we are conclude that the boy who presented these loaves was indeed poor. These loaves of bread may have been the only thing he owned. However, despite the fact that the bread is of lesser quality, it is everything to this boy and he offers it all to Jesus. He turns over everything he has and gives it to Our Lord. He had faith that this man, this teacher, could do something with his meager offering. Even with the Apostle Andrew’s somewhat disparaging remark:
“What good are these for so many?”
Nevertheless, what does the Lord do? He takes this small offering and after giving thanks, in Greek “Eucharisteo,” he feeds the multitude, and they were filled.
This is passage could serve as an instruction booklet for how we should attend Mass. We should arrive, not simple to see a spectacle, but we should give everything to the Lord. Offer all that is in our hearts to Him, offer our very lives to Him. Our hopes, our joys, our worries, our griefs, our pains, give it all to God. Lay it at the foot of his throne. After opening our hearts and souls to Him, he will fill it. Not simply with a meal of ordinary bread, but with the Bread of Salvation, His very own Body and Blood. Because Jesus is so in love with us that he desires to become part of us, to dwell in our very bodies, and heal us, make us whole.
So I urge you all, really open your lives to God in a dramatic way. Remember what it is that we come together to celebrate at this very altar. The feeding of the crowds, the Last Supper, the Sacrifice on Calvary, all culminate in the sacrifice we enter into here and now. Be fed, be filled with God Himself, and dramatically live out that call that St. Paul speaks about in the second reading. That call to not only receive and flourish in the Truth but to spread that Truth, that Joy, that Salvation that comes to us through Jesus Christ, to the ends of the Earth.
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