Daily Reflection They Ate and Were Filled

After concluding Jesus’ talk with Nicodemus in John 3, in today’s liturgy we have moved to the great sixth chapter of John, which at 71 verses is the longest chapter in all the gospel accounts. We will not conclude it at the liturgy until Saturday of next week. Unlike all the synoptic gospel accounts, John’s never speaks of Jesus instituting the eucharist at the last supper on the night before he died (despite the fact that John spends five chapters on the last supper!). Instead, we have John’s chapter 6 which actually tells us far more about the eucharist than any of the synoptics do. Thus, it is known as the eucharistic chapter of John.

It begins, appropriately, with the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand that we hear today. This is the one and only miracle of Christ’s that appears in all four gospel accounts. In Matthew and Mark there is another similar story of Jesus feeding the four thousand. In Matthew’s account of that he relates that there were four thousand men, “not counting the women and children.” Therefore, we can assume the same about the five thousand, that there were many more thousands there also. It was a huge crowd.

All four accounts of the miracle are quite similar, but John’s is the most unique account of this miracle. In the synoptics, though the disciples speak to Jesus about the impossibility of feeding so many, only John names the two Apostles who spoke, Philip and then Andrew. Philip exclaims that, “Six month’s wages” could not buy enough even for each to have but a bite. In Mark the (unnamed) disciples say it would cost two hundred denarii, which is the same thing since one denarius was a day’s wage then. Andrew then tells Jesus that there is a boy with five (barley- John alone mentions this detail) loaves and two fish. That number remains the same in all four gospel accounts as well as the twelve baskets of leftovers gathered at the end. It is John alone who mentions the endearing detail that it was from a boy that the five loaves and two fish were supplied. What must that boy have felt later when he saw his meager supply feed that enormous crowd? In all accounts, Jesus gives thanks before he distributes the food, but only the synoptics mention that he blessed the food also. All four accounts also state that the people ate as much as they wanted (“they were filled”). Only John mentions that the people tried to carry him away to make him king after this great sign.

In the hierarchy of human needs, at the top is the air that we breath, followed by water and then food. Those three take precedence over everything else. We must first have them before shelter, companionship or any other thing. And it is food that we human beings lavish the most attention upon, everything from how it is cooked to how it is served to the rituals of our eating together at table. But Jesus told Satan during his forty days being tempted in the desert, quoting Moses from Deuteronomy 8:3, that “People do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

In the spiritual sense of being fed, we ask ourselves, what do we hunger and thirst for? The fourth Beatitude from Matthew 5 says, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Psalm 42 begins beautifully with, “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” Then of course, there is the “Living water” Jesus spoke of to the Samaritan woman at the well, “Rising up to eternal life.” It is always God who nourishes us, as the Lord’s prayer tells us, “Give us this day our daily bread.” It is all God’s gift. But Paul would tell the Corinthians to “strive for the higher gifts.” As Jesus would tell his disciples later in chapter 6, “The bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.” In an almost literal sense, we are truly nourished by feeding on the body and blood of Jesus, for “My flesh is real food and my blood real drink.” 

But Jesus also says in John 6 that “The flesh is useless. The Spirit alone gives life.” A saying today that has become a mantra is, you are what you eat. In the great mystery of the eucharist, we are fed by God himself and become one with Jesus, the Word made flesh, who became one with us. But unlike other food, this food nourishes our whole self, spirit, soul and body and lifts us up to the highest gift of all, God’s absolute unchanging love for us that was so great that, as Jesus told Nicodemus, God gave us his only son, the bread that has come down from heaven. By becoming one with Jesus and dying with him to ourselves, we become one in his Spirit, the Spirit of the living God. And for that we give great thanks, for the word eucharist means thanks.