(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)
A foodstuff wonder-worker is just the kind of Messiah many in Israel were looking for. He would be useful in military campaigns. Supply lines could be eliminated. Well-nourished troops could surprise an enemy with great strength and versatility. Even the intimate friends of Christ, the Twelve Apostles, expected the Messiah to establish his kingdom through force.
But Christ made it clear that the kingdom of God would not be established by military conquest. When the Apostles James and John asked the Lord to call down fire from heaven to destroy his enemies in Samaria, the Lord rebuked them and (perhaps with amusement) gave them the surname, “sons of thunder.” In the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord warned the sword-wielding Peter that he who “lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”
When tempted by the Devil in the desert, the foodstuff wonder-worker Himself insisted that “Man does not live on bread alone.” While the ministry of Christ certainly includes a compassionate ministry to the poor and hungry, the multiplication of the loaves must point to another kind of abundance. But the whole picture can only come into focus by harmonizing the Gospels according to Catholic tradition.
Immediately following the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, St. Matthew reports the account of Jesus walking on the water and calming the sea as well as the frayed nerves of the Apostles being tossed about in the boat. He gently chides them as men of “little faith.” But to the Jewish mind, Jesus' mastery of the violent seas has great significance. The sea is a sign of chaos. The monsters of the sea represent the powers of evil. Only God has the power to overcome the chaos and evil of the sea. Christ is revealing his divinity to his disciples.
Immediately following the calming of the seas, according to Catholic tradition, is the “Eucharistic Discourse” in the Gospel of St. John. If the walking on the water reveals the divinity of Christ, the Eucharistic Discourse reveals Christ as the true “Bread of Life” who has “come down from heaven.” He promises “he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” And despite the objections of his disciples who abandon him, he holds fast to this literal revelation: “For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” This revelation is completed at the Last Supper when Christ — using words to be taken literally — says over simple bread and wine, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” The Eucharist!
The superabundance of bread Christ offers us is his very self under the appearances of mere bread and wine at Holy Mass. If the multiplication of the loaves reveals the compassion of Christ, it ultimately directs our attention to an abundance that will never fail. For “he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Any abundance of bread cannot be more useful than that.
