“It’s every third Sunday in Cycle B that the Church interrupts the regular Gospel readings with a reading and Gospels covering all of chapter 6. As Father indicated to you, today will be the beginning of John Chapter 6 and will continue with the richness of these Eucharistic lessons, this Eucharistic theology that John lays out in this chapter and I invite all of you to take you bible this week and the weeks to come and to pray with it and to meditate upon it.
Today’s Gospel of the multiplication of the loaves prefigures the Eucharist. Now I would like to breakdown the Gospel a bit and explore what John is teaching us about the Eucharist and its symbolism that we find in the Mass. John tells us that there is a large crowd following Jesus and we remember from last week’s Gospel how the people flocked to Jesus like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus drew large crowds then as he draws large crowds today. As we look around we see men and women, boys and girls, people from all walks of life. We too are drawn to Jesus in the Mass. We sit at his feet. He teaches us through his word and he nourishes us with his body and his blood.
Next in the Gospel we hear that Jesus went up on the mountain. Now this is an ongoing theme that we hear throughout the scripture. It’s the mountain where we encounter God. Abraham binds Isaac on Mt. Moriah that very same mountain that a few thousand years later would be known as Mt. Calvary. Moses receives the Law on Mt. Sinai. Elijah challenges the Baal idolitors on Mt. Carmel. Jesus is transfigured on Mt. Tabor. Jesus teaches the New Covenant on the sermon on the mount and today he goes to the mountain where he feeds the multitudes. The Mass is that symbolic mountain where human spirit aspires upward and divinity reaches down from Heaven. In the preface of every Mass the priest will pray for this joining of Heaven and Earth that the angels and all the Saints with one voice will acclaim, ‘Holy, holy, holy’ for the Mass is the mountain top experience. We are on holy ground.
Next, Jesus tells us that the Jewish feast of the Passover is near. Passover was the feast commemorating the exodus of Israel from slavery to freedom. An unblemished lamb is sacrificed and a meal of unleavened bread and the lamb was eaten and this Mass is a representation of Calvary that sacrifice of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world for every Mass is a kind of Passover and just as in last week’s Gospel where Jesus was moved with pity because the crowd was like sheep without a shepherd, Jesus sees that the crowd has not eaten and he wants to satisfy their hunger. The vast crowd symbolizes not only Israel, but the whole human race across space and time for people hunger for the meaning and the purpose of life. We are those who hunger. We are those people who attempt to satisfy our hunger with things that do not satisfy: money, power, comfort, prestige, pleasure.
Next, we hear in the Gospel that there’s this boy with five loaves and two fish and Jesus asks that they be given to him because this is all that the people have. Again, think of the Mass. A small amount of bread and wine is brought forward and given to the priest who is acting in persona Christi, in the person of Christ. Now that small wafer cannot satisfy the physical hunger, but once it is transformed into the body and blood of Jesus it can satisfy our spiritual hunger. Then in the Gospel we hear these words- ‘He took bread. He gave thanks and he distributed it.’ This is the Eucharistic formula we hear at the last supper and at every Mass we partake in. The priest takes the bread, gives thanks, breaks it and then it is distributed. For 2000 years the priest acting in the person of Christ takes, thanks, breaks and distributes. Then we read, ‘When they had their fill he directed the disciples to gather up the fragments.’ At the conclusion of the Eucharist meal in the Mass the fragments are gathered up and placed in the tabernacle for those who are not able to partake: the sick, those in prison. The twelve baskets are symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jesus came to gather them and through them and through us together, the world.
I keep thinking of Fr. Gary’s inaugural address to us some three weeks ago when he compared our daily existence to the highways and byways of life as if it were the road to Heaven and it is the Mass that is the pit stop. It is the Mass where we are gathered on holy ground and nourished by the Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian life. It is the Mass where we are transformed, but it is through those doors into the world where we are called to gather the world to transform the world, the world that is hungry for truth.”