Who is my neighbour?
Jesus feeds the world
Photo by Usman Ahmed on Unsplash
JESUS FEEDS THE WORLD
Mt. 14:13-21
News reached Jesus that His cousin John the Baptist had been martyred. This news saddened Him and His Apostles. Some of His Apostles had once been John’s disciples. He wanted them to be on their own to grieve and so He planned to go to a lonely place. This was not to happen. The crowd found out where He was going and followed Him. This time John the Baptist had won. He could not dissuade Jesus from being baptised but now he was not going to let Him grieve over him. John’s mission had been to lead people to Jesus, the Messiah. Indirectly, his death was doing precisely that.
When Jesus saw the crowd He set His grieving aside and attended to the people. Many of them had brought their sick and He felt compassion for them and cured each one individually. As He mingled among them I think we can say He not only cured them but would have had words of wisdom to help them. This would have taken time and evening had approached. He was aware of their hunger and set out to feed them.
Jesus involved His Apostles in His work of feeding them. He challenged them and told them to feed the multitude themselves. They looked at their meagre rations for such a crowd, five loaves and two fish, and rightly indicated that it was impossible to feed such a crowd with so little. Being with Jesus so long don’t you think one of them would have said, “Lord, you can do anything, you can feed them”? Here we see how a little in our hands is immense in the hands of others. We often feel that our contribution to Jesus is meagre, but He can use and multiply whatever we give Him, whether it is talent, time or treasure. It is when we give them to Jesus that our resources are multiplied.
We are told that Jesus fed 5000 men not counting women and children. That meant there were probably about 15,000 in the crowd, a woman and a child for every man. The number of men is listed separately because in the Jewish culture of the day, men and women usually ate separately when in public. The children ate with the women. Feeding 15,000 was a huge number to feed! How did this miraculous feeding of that crowd take place? There is a theory that when the crowd saw the Apostles trying to share their meagre resources it prompted the people not to be greedy and to share what food they had among everyone. If we accept such was the case we are denigrating the power of the miracle. If Moses, who prefigured Jesus, could with God’s help daily feed the Israelites with manna in the desert, could not Jesus, who was greater than Moses, multiply His resources and feed that crowd?
When everyone had had enough He told the Apostles to gather up the remaining scraps. We are told that the twelve baskets were filled with leftovers. This tells us that when God gives He is not mean. He is lavish and generous and gives us more than we need. Perhaps the leftovers were given to the very poor among them. They were like doggy bags for them to take home for their next meal. They could even have been given to feed their hens at home. We can learn a lesson here not to waste food. What some families waste in a day could feed a starving family in a third world country!
Lord Jesus, this feeding of the 5000 was a foretaste of what You would shortly do when You instituted the Holy Eucharist and would feed millions all over the world on Your Body and Blood. In this loving way You heal, teach and feed us. You feed and teach us at the table of the Word. We cannot grow spiritually unless we are being taught – through the Word of God and the teaching of the Church. In the Eucharist You feed us with Your own Body and Blood, healing us and giving us new strength. We are all on a journey to the Father as St. Pope John Paul II said, “The whole of the Christian life is like a great pilgrimage to the house of the Father.” (Tertio millennio adveniente 49). On that journey we are all wounded and needy. The food of the Eucharist penetrates into the depths of our being to renew us by healing the wounds of our sins and pouring the life of God into us. So every time we come to Holy Communion let us never fail to say to Jesus, “I love You and thank You for all you have done for us.
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