17th Sunday 2024
2Kings 4:42-44; Ephesians 4:1-6; John 6: 1-15
You may have noticed that we are having a break. “Great stuff!” I hear you cry. “No homily, just like the days of town holiday fortnights!” (Many of you will recall the tradition of suspending preaching during Lancaster Holidays, or Preston Holidays, or Wigan Wakes, or whatever town you were in when the factories closed for their annual fortnight’s leave. I still recall the consternation of my parish priest when he discovered that my ordination was to fall on the middle Sunday of Lancaster Holidays, which would necessitate a homily.)
Unfortunately, that is not what I have in mind. We are having a break from following St. Mark’s Gospel, and instead spending five weeks reading the Bread of Life discourse from chapter six of St. John.
Except that we are not—spending five weeks on the Bread of Life discourse, I mean. That will not begin until next week. Today we are at the beginning of John chapter six, with no mention of the Bread of Life. Instead we have an earthly feeding, with no direct reference to Jesus’ gift of Himself in the Eucharist.
Yet John, in setting his account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand at the beginning of this chapter, intends to establish a link. This will become clear next weekend, when Jesus makes particular reference to this feeding with earthly bread before launching His account of giving Himself as the Bread from Heaven. Why should this be so?
Throughout the scriptures we are told how God fed, and indeed feeds, His people. The clearest instance is the Manna, the Bread from Heaven which, we are told, sustained the Israelites on their forty year journey through the wilderness to the promised land. Earlier still there was the account of Joseph relieving the famine by feeding the people, including Jacob and his sons, with bread from the granaries of Egypt. Similarly, there are frequent references in the psalms, such as today’s, to God meeting the needs, not only of His people, but of all creatures, for earthly food.
We see a clear precedent for the Gospel’s miraculous feeding in the story of Elisha, who also distributed barley loaves, and found himself with a surplus. We also have the prophet Isaiah speaking of the Messianic banquet, when the people of God will sit down with the Messiah to enjoy a banquet of rich foods and fine wines.
All of these passages, in speaking of God’s feeding of His people, help prepare us for the Feeding of the Five Thousand, but Isaiah’s account of the Messianic banquet takes us further. All our earthly food is a preparation for our sharing in the banquet of the Messiah, and Jesus’ miraculous feeding on the hillside is the first stage in that banquet. Clearly, though, there is more to come: this is not the rich food and fine wines promised by the prophet.
In His Bread of Life discourse, Jesus promises that “MORE”, when we are to eat His flesh and drink His blood in the Eucharist, which is itself, as St. Thomas Aquinas was to point out, “a pledge of the glory to come”. That glory will be revealed, according to the Book of the Apocalypse, in the marriage supper of the Lamb, when the Messiah, Jesus, the Lamb of God, is united eternally with His bride, the Church. Thus, the Feeding of the Five Thousand is the foretaste of a foretaste, as the Eucharist looks forward to that ultimate banquet, whilst being itself a part of it, as we consume the “real food and real drink” which are the flesh and blood of Jesus Himself.
So far, so Eucharistic, but is there more to be said? It seems significant that, before speaking of heavenly food, Jesus first meets the need of the people for earthly bread. We, as His Body, the Church, must do the same. From the time of the apostles, the Church has always recognised the call to feed the physically hungry, as well as the spiritually hungry. In the Acts of the Apostles, we read how those whom we regard as the first deacons were given the task of distributing food, while Justin the Martyr, in the earliest written account of the celebration of Mass in the early Church, describes how the food brought to the altar at the Offertory was to be distributed to “all who (are) in need”. It was the handing over of this food which led the priest to wash his hands before proceeding to the altar, a practical need which preceded any spiritual significance at the lavabo.
Soon, money was substituted for actual food, but the message was the same: if we are to share in the Eucharistic banquet, we must contribute to the feeding of the poor and needy. Thus, whilst today’s Gospel may not be specifically Eucharistic, its connection with the Mass is clear: and there is more to come.
