Navarre Bible Commentary:Tuesday After Epiphany

Source: Wikipedia

Matthew 15:32-39

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

Feeding the Four Thousand

32 Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days, and have nothing to eat; and I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.” 33 And the disciples said to him, “Where are we to get bread enough in the desert to feed so great a crowd?” 34 And Jesus said to them, “How many loaves have you?” They said, “Seven, and a few small fish.”35 And commanding the crowd to sit down on the ground, 36 he took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 37 And they all ate and were satisfied; and they took up seven baskets full of the broken pieces left over. 38 Those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children. 39 And sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of Mag′adan.

Cited in the Catechism:  In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Blessed John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium."  He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraph 322, 764, 1454, 2547, 2659, 2763, 2830  and 2836.

Commentary

6:34. Our Lord had planned a period of rest, for himself and his disciples, from the pressures of the apostolate (Mk 6:31–32). And he has to change his plans because so many people come, eager to hear him speak. Not only is he not annoyed with them: he feels compassion on seeing their spiritual need. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos 4:6). They need instruction and our Lord wants to meet this need by preaching to them. “Jesus is moved by hunger and sorrow, but what moves him most is ignorance” (St Josemaría Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, 109).

6:37. A denarius was what an artisan earned for a normal day’s work. The disciples must, therefore, have thought it little less than impossible to fulfil the Master’s command, because they would not have had this much money.

6:41. This miracle is a figure of the Holy Eucharist: Christ performed it shortly before promising that sacrament (cf. Jn 6:1ff), and the Fathers have always so interpreted it. In this miracle Jesus shows his supernatural power and his love for men—the same power and love as make it possible for Christ’s one and only body to be present in the eucharistic species to nourish the faithful down the centuries. In the words of the sequence composed by St Thomas Aquinas for the Mass of Corpus Christi: “Sumit unus, sumunt mille, quantum isti, tantum ille, nec sumptus consumitur” (Be one or be a thousand fed, they eat alike that living bread which, still received, ne’er wastes away).

This gesture of our Lord—looking up to heaven—is recalled in the Roman canon of the Mass: “Et elevatis oculis in caelum, ad Te Deum Patrem suum omni-potentem” (and looking up to heaven, to you, his almighty Father). At this point in the Mass we are preparing to be present at a miracle greater than that of the multiplication of the loaves—the changing of bread into his own body, offered as food for all men.

6:42. Christ wanted the left-overs to be collected (cf. Jn 6:12) to teach us not to waste things God gives us, and also to have them as a tangible proof of the miracle.

The collecting of the left-overs is a way of showing us the value of little things done out of love for God—orderliness, cleanliness, finishing things completely. It also reminds the sensitive believer of the extreme care that must be taken of the eucharistic species. Also, the generous scale of the miracle is an expression of the largesse of the messianic times. The Fathers recall that Moses distributed the manna for each to eat as much as he needed but some left part of it for the next day and it bred worms (Ex 16:16–20). Elijah gave the widow just enough to meet her needs (1 Kings 17:13–16). Jesus, on the other hand, gives generously and abundantly.

Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

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