The feeding of Five Thousand people

July 26, 2015
Sunday, 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: 2 Kings
4:42-44
2nd Reading: Eph 4:1-6
Gospel: Jn 6:1-15

Then lifting up his eyes, Jesus saw the crowds that were coming to him and said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread so that these people may eat?” He said this to test Philip, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred silver coins would not buy enough bread for each of them to have a piece.”

Then one of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?”

Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass there so the people, about five thousand men, sat down to rest. Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed them to those who were seated. He did the same with the fish and gave them as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten enough, he told his disciples, “Gather up the pieces left over, that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with bread (…). When the people saw this sign that Jesus had just given, they said, “This is really the Prophet, he who is to come into the world.” Jesus realized that they would come and take him by force to make him king; so he fled to the hills by himself.

D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)

One interpretation regarding the multiplication of the loaves posits the warehouse effect. It says that people who followed Jesus took secret provisions with them. Seeing the five loaves passed around, they began taking out their own provisions and sharing some to others. Nice lesson on sharing! However, it undermines Jesus’ power over bread and disturbs our faith in the Eucharist.

The other interpretation confirms Jesus’ power over bread and claims that the five thousand people got a loaf each. But this reduces Jesus to a magician. Surely Jesus achieved more by doing more than magically multiplying the loaves.

We maintain that a miracle was involved, not in the multiplication of the loaves but in the feeding of the five thousand. There were five and only five loaves that the people passed around. They moment they got hold of one they broke a small piece for themselves and continued to pass it on to others. How the five loaves satisfied the more than five thousand people is the miracle, not the magical mechanical multiplication of the bread loaf by loaf. What Jesus did brings out best the confluence of God’s abundance and the peoples’ concern for one another. — Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM . Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.

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