The multiplication of loaves (Luke 9:11-17) is the one miracle common to all four gospels. For the feast of Corpus Christi, the account provides us with the parameters within which to interpret today the meaning and challenge of the Eucharist, the Christian celebration of the Body of Jesus Christ.
The Messiah
Luke’s narration of the multiplication of loaves is preceded by Herod’s perplexity as to the identity of Jesus. “Who then is this about whom I hear all these things?” namely among others that one of the prophets of old has arisen (Luke 9:9). For Luke and his community Jesus is in fact greater than the ancient prophets. If Elisha (2 Kings 4:42-44) fed 100 men with only 20 loaves of bread, Jesus gave bread in surplus to 5,000 men out of five loaves. If the deed of Elisha manifested to the people the mighty presence of God among His chosen ones, the miracle of the multiplication of bread by Jesus bore witness to the power of God in Him as the anointed one, the Christ.
His disciples saw that the feeding of the 5,000 fulfilled the Old Testament promises that God in His providence would feed His own people (Isaiah 25:6; 65:13-14; Psalm 78:19; 81:16-17). Hunger is seen as pain ailing God’s people, and liberation from hunger and partaking of food on the table of the Lord are messianic signs of the coming of God’s reign. Purposely, Luke introduced the account of the multiplication of loaves by referring to the (hungry) crowds looking for Jesus and being received by Him. Jesus feeding the crowds is a portrayal of Him as the Prophet-Messiah who stilled the hunger of God’s people. “They all ate and were satisfied.”
His Eucharist
Luke remarkably followed the account of the miracle with the prediction of the passion of Jesus (Luke 9:22). He did not include the incident about the people rushing at Jesus to make Him their king after having eaten of the abundant bread (John 6:15). Quietly putting aside any idea of a political messiahship, we are reminded instead of the distinct manner Jesus would exercise His being the Messiah-King. No sheer display of royal power, but saving the people through a process of transformation that would include His passion and death.
It must be noted that all evangelists pointedly retained the language of the Last Supper in the narration of the multiplication of loaves (Mark 6:30-44; 8:1-9; Matthew 14:13-21; 15:32-38; John 6:1-13). The gestures of Jesus (“taking, looking up, blessed, broke, gave”) relate His feeding actions to the mystery of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. The Eucharist and His other earlier feeding and life-giving actions and also His later appearance meals with His followers as the risen Lord should be seen as intimately related and mutually shedding light on each other. Transparent in all of them is the sacrificial dimension of the saving work of Jesus. Blessed, broken and given to be consumed, that is what happens to the bread, the body of Jesus offers for His followers and the people. It is as immolated and sacrificed that Jesus definitively proclaims to the world the saving love of the Father. His thanksgiving of love, His Eucharist, was and is His self-sacrifice for the life of the world.
Alálaong bagá, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19) at the Last Supper is echoed by “Give them some food yourselves” (Luke 9:13) at the multiplication of loaves. Jesus’ intention is for the people to have life in abundance and be liberated from all forms of hunger, and for His followers imitating Him in self-sacrifice to continue His mission of saving and giving life to others. The 12 baskets of left-over, referring to the 12 tribes of God’s people and to the 12 apostles empowered and entrusted with the task to do again and again what the Lord has done, dramatize divine abundance and saving compassion. All must be fed, no one should go hungry, and His Eucharistic people must never be tolerant of any form of hunger in the world. As a people whose supreme self-expression is the Eucharist, we should be at the forefront of the struggle against all manners of the destruction of human life. Even as we partake of the Eucharistic Body of Jesus, we know we are all summoned to the fullness of life still to come and to the communion still to be realized.
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