“As Fr. Gary mentioned, today we hear from John’s Gospel rather than from Mark’s Gospel. Every third year we take a break from Mark’s Gospel during the Sunday Gospel readings and we read from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. In her wisdom, the Church sees how critical it is that we become exposed to and more familiar with John 6. The entire chapter is a crescendo to what is called the Bread of Life Discourse. The Bread of Life Discourse, I won’t discuss that in detail, but it is the most explicit basis for our belief in the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Of course it’s the Eucharist that sets apart the Mass from all other forms of Christian worship. The Bread of Life Discourse from John 6 is Jesus’ instruction to us about how we are to worship God, so it’s critical that we become familiar with John 6. I would encourage you to read John 6 if you’ve never read it from start to finish or it’s been awhile since you read it. It should only take ten or fifteen minutes to read and I think that it will make the readings for the next four Sundays come alive for you more. The feeding of the five thousand people (actually just the men, it doesn’t count women and children) in our reading today is a prelude to the Bread of Life Discourse. These people who were fed by the multiplication of loaves were presumably rational people. They knew they were following Jesus into a deserted place where there was no food or lodging and they yearned for more than food or lodging. They wanted to hear Jesus talk about the kingdom of God. They had a need for healing from Jesus just as we do. There’s some symbolism from this event. The only thing that this enormous crowd had to offer was a measly five barley loaves and two fish and in those days barley was viewed as being an inferior grain. Only the poor people would eat bread made from barley and this barley represents the little bit that we have to offer God in the way of our prayers and our efforts to live virtuously. From this measly offering Jesus generated an abundance, an overabundance of bread. There was enough to feed the entire crowd and have plenty of leftovers. Just as the event in our first reading foreshadows the multiplication of loaves in our Gospel reading today, the multiplication of loaves foreshadows the Eucharist. In the Eucharist we offer to God bread and wine and our joys and our hopes, all of which are gifts from God in the first place and what we receive in return is God himself, Jesus’ body and blood, the medicine of our immortality. This one sided exchange or encounter in the Eucharist is similar to the encounter in our spiritual journey generally. God initiates this with a free gift of grace. We respond to this gift of grace with the powers of our soul, our intellect and our will and our emotions, all of which are also gifts from God and God rewards this response with even more grace and this compounding, circular exchange or encounter continues until we reach perfection and pure happiness in Heaven.
Just like the exchange in our Gospel reading and in the Eucharist, this exchange in our spiritual journey is one sided. What we give to God is so measly and what we get is infinitely greater. From an earthly view of justice this lopsided exchange is unfair. We should never feel guilty about the one sidedness of it. This is how God drew it up. This is how He willed it to be. This is a demonstration of how much God loves each one of us. This is the reason for our hope. We absolutely, positively cannot keep that under a basket. We have to share that with everyone that we can to the best of our ability.”