Today, on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, we again hear the familiar gospel story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. However, many of us may be familiar with an interpretation, or naturalistic explanation of the event, which claims that in all probability those who were present simply shared with each other what they had already.
Now while it's true that such an interpretation might teach us a good lesson concerning the practical value of generosity or the pragmatic value of our relationship to others, it nevertheless runs the risk of completely missing the point and impact of the true miracle. The story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes is about God's superabundant goodness toward us. In the story as it is presented to us Jesus feeds five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. He does it out of the sheer power of God to provide for all our needs, but even more out of his desire to share his essential nature with us who, in our spiritual hunger, long for salvation.
We are no more in need of a naturalistic explanation of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes than we are in need of one to explain the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Jesus feeds the multitude in the same manner that God gives us himself totally and completely out of his goodness toward humankind in the Eucharist. He does it miraculously as a sign of his great love.
God loves us and in Jesus he is one of us and one with us. In Jesus God gives humanity the gift of himself. He gives himself totally and with a degree of abandon that can only be described as pure love flowing forth from the inexhaustible fountain of God's own being. In the feeding of the multitude and in the Eucharist Jesus gives us that which is essential about his nature rather what is merely tangible.
A prayer that we all know, that many, if not most of us pray daily, is the Our Father or the Lord's Prayer. When we look closely at this prayer it reveals something to us about God's gift to us. We all know the words "Give us this day our daily bread." When we look at the original Greek we find that the word translated as "daily" is epiousios. It doesn't have an exact meaning in English, but through the ages it has been interpreted to mean "daily" or "all we need for today." Interestingly there is no other occurrence of the word in Greek literature other than in the Lord's Prayer as found in Matthew and Luke; therefore, the word lacks meaning outside a eucharistic context. Our daily bread, our epiousios bread, which literally translates as "super-substantial" bread is the sustenance that Jesus provides in the Eucharist and in the multiplication of the five loaves and two. It shows us that God is not limited and that it is his will to provide from the depths of his very being for human salvation.
Now there is a practical response on our part. As God gives to us, so we are to return our gifts to God by the giving of ourselves, by giving what we have to give. Though we are undoubtedly to give to others, the starting place for our giving of ourselves must be the gift of ourselves back to God first, just as Abram gave in return, in thanksgiving, that is, in eucharistia, to Melchizedek the King of Salem, we too are to give of ourselves to God, to Jesus, who is the King of Peace.
In faith we offer ourselves in total abandon to God's will. We say with our Blessed Mother, "As it pleases God, so let it be done unto me." In the total outpouring of who we are and all we are we become the imitators of God in Christ, and we find complete fulfillment in his will. We must find that there is no end to which we are not willing to go; we empty ourselves in divine imitation and in doing so we come to a better knowledge of the gift of the Body and Blood of Christ. In our giving of self in the work that is love, we come to know that the gift we give is only that which God has given us already. The gift we give is his essence, his super-substantial gift of himself to us—the gift given at the multiplication of loaves and fishes, the gift given on the cross, and the gift given at the altar.
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