Enough food for all

Given the importance of the Holy Eucharist for the individual Christian as well as for the life of the Church at large, the Church's liturgy draws our attention to it in the Gospel read on four successive Sundays of the current liturgical year.

Today we are invited to reflect on the relationship between the Eucharist as spiritual bread and the problem of world hunger. Next Sunday the Gospel reading reminds us of the Eucharist as a celebration of thanksgiving for God's loving kindness, which unites in Christ all men of good will.

The Sunday after that we learn about the Eucharist as the food by which we overcome death and attain eternal life. And finally, on the fourth Sunday, we see the link existing between the Eucharist itself and the word of God.

Of all the miracles performed by Jesus, which we find scattered all over the four Gospels, the miracle of the multiplication of bread, which is offered today for our meditation, is the only one that is narrated by all the four evangelists. This is, of course, an indication of its importance in the context of Our Lord's public life and his teachings.

After a stressful journey, followed by his disciples and the crowds who had been following him, Jesus finally sits down for a rest, and so did his disciples, as well as the hundreds and probably thousands of people who had been following them.

As both Jesus and all the rest had not touched any food for many hours, they all found themselves confronted by a serious and practical problem: "It is about time we all had something to eat." And that was true for Jesus and the disciples, and more so for the crowds themselves.

The miracle of the multiplication of bread we have probably heard and read many times. What a marvellous sight it must have been, thousands of people sitting on the grass, surrounded by the disciples and Jesus in the middle!

They had already been sated by the marvellous teachings of Jesus throughout the whole day. But the time had also come for satisfying another need: that of the bodily food. And indeed a lot of it was needed to satisfy the entire crowd.

Seeing such a vast mass of hungry people, Jesus said to Philip, one of the disciples: "Whence are we to buy bread for these folks to eat?" He knew well enough what he was about to do.

There was a boy there who happened to have some food with him: just five barley loaves and two fishes. A drop in the ocean! Jesus blessed those and multiplied them for the benefit of all. The whole crowd of followers had then more than enough to eat, to say nothing about the considerable amount of leftovers, which the gospel itself refers to.

Though the miracle took place thanks to Our Lord's power and infinite goodness, and not by that of the disciples, in a sense it did unfold itself through the working of their hands.

God meets the needs of the people through the services provided by members of the community. And this is true not only in the context of those around us who are poor and have not got enough to eat, but touches on the whole problem of world hunger, a problem which may not perhaps involve us individually, but which constitutes a real shame on the many countries which not only have more than enough to eat, but which often end up getting rid of it by burning it, if not by throwing it out into the sea.

Enough food for thought, especially for us who have been blessed by the Lord with the bread of life, which is the Eucharist!