BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST – YEAR C
Commentary of Fr. Fernando Armellini
A good Sunday to all.
The Gospel text we will hear today is one of the best known. It deals with the so-called 'multiplication of the loaves and fishes.' This text is known to all; even non-believers have heard of this text. We find it six times in the Gospels; Matthew and Mark narrate it twice. This means that this text contains a very important message. What is it? The immediate and spontaneous response would be Jesus' proof of being God because only God can create something from nothing. In our universe, nothing is created, and nothing is destroyed. If something is made from nothing, it is God's intervention.
The first thing we must do, if we want to grasp what the evangelists want to communicate to us, is to cancel the title that we find in practically all our bibles: 'Miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.' If we have this perspective of the narrative, we are far away, and we do not grasp the message of what the evangelist wants to tell us. In the text, there is no allusion to a miracle or multiplication. It simply says that Jesus took the loaves and the fish presented to him and distributed them, showing that that food was sufficient and superabundant.
On the other hand, if we consider the account as a material fact, problems appear for which it is very difficult to find an answer. First, there are six multiplications of the loaves and fishes, and no two agree with the details. The numbers of those who have eaten vary: 5000 – 4000. Further on, twelve baskets, seven baskets, five loaves...no, it's seven loaves. Also, the place is different: one evangelist places it in the wilderness, another next to the lake where the fertile plains are.
And if we take this text as a narration of a material fact, there appear details that we immediately see as implausible. Let us try to imagine the disciples' difficulty in following the instructions given by Jesus: divide the 5000 men into groups of 50; therefore, they must make 100 groups of 50 in the dark because it is night. Then, begin to distribute the loaves and fishes in that confusion.
Taken as a fact, it doesn't have much to tell us. We are faced with insoluble questions. But, if instead, we take it as a parable, then it will have a lot to say because it implies a radical change in our way of relating to each other, with the reality of this world and the way of administering the goods that we need to live. In the old world, the one that Jesus came to turn upside down, we will see that the relationship with the goods was invented by human cunning.
Jesus proposes a new way. The provocative message we will try to discover relates to the authentic celebration of the Eucharist, the feast we celebrate today. For those who, knowing what they are doing, accept Christ in their lives, eating that bread, which is him, this choice they make to accept Christ in their lives and his proposal of a new world presupposes a radical change in the way of administering the goods of this world so that there is food for all and not just enough but superabundant.
Let us listen to the beginning of the narration of the text that the evangelist Luke has left us:
“At that time, Jesus received the multitude, spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured. As the day drew to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, ‘Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions, for we are in a deserted place here." He said to them, "Give them some food yourselves.’"
The evangelist Luke sets the sign of the distribution of the loaves and fishes near Bethsaida. You can see where this town that gave five apostles was located, about 2500 meters from the northern shore of the Lake of Galilee. The narrative has detail; in the surrounding area were fields and villages. In Jesus' time, the shores of the Lake of Galilee were much more populated than today; there were villages everywhere. Continuing with the not-very-plausible details, we find another one that speaks of a deserted place. In that area, there are no deserts.
Then, we understand that the evangelist invites us to read the narration through the biblical symbolism of the image he introduces. Speaking of a deserted place, he wants to refer to the exodus, and what Jesus proposes to us is an 'exodus.' To leave an old world, an old world, where the goods of this world that we need are administered according to human criteria, which are selfishness and the desire to accumulate, and enter into a land of freedom where these same goods are allocated according to God's standards.
Jesus will make his proposal, and we will give adhesion to this new world and his proposal in the Eucharist. There is a valuable indication with which he begins the narration, an indication of time "as the day was drawing to a close." It is the image of the conclusion of Jesus' journey; his journey consisted of this: announcement of the Gospel and, as a result, the wonders. Significant events always occur when one adheres to his proposal of an extraordinary life.
At the end of this day, Jesus gives his solution to a problem that people have always felt and that we also feel today: food, housing, and a place to live. Maybe we think this problem has nothing to do with the Gospel because many today think religion and spiritual life have nothing to do with these material problems. We find this conception on the lips of the disciples who turn to Jesus and say to him: Today we have heard your word; command this multitude that has heard you to return and send them away so that they may go to the nearby towns in the surrounding countryside and find lodging and food.'
An argument that reflects what many Christians still think today: On Sunday, we went to church, prayed, and heard the Gospel; now, let's go out and let each one of us get by as we can with the concrete and material things. For them, as for the disciples, the Gospel is one thing, and the concrete life is another. They would say: 'Catechesis teaches how to go to heaven, to paradise; the rest is up to each one.' 'Spiritual life has nothing to do with the material.'
Jesus does not think like that. Therefore, we have these two problems that Luke presents: housing and food. When we speak of housing or food, we refer to the material food, the bread that fills the stomach, and everything the person needs. This world's goods nourish our whole life, a fully human life that implies affection, friendships, esteem, communication, social life, health, and home where to live.
Many needs must be satisfied for a life to be fully human. That is where the Gospel comes in with the answer to all these needs. We know that a full stomach satisfies an animal, but for a human being, it is not enough. The person needs this satiety to be realized in the context of love and acceptance of the brothers and sisters. To satiate all these forms of needs, what answer do the disciples give? We have heard it: Let each one make his way; let each one go and buy what he needs from those who sell it.
Note that in the mouth of the disciples, we find our logic, that of our world, the logic of the market. The exchange system is necessary because if each one of us would keep what he can produce with his ability, we would all die. God made us well; he did not make us self-sufficient; we have goods that will never be lacking, but we are forced to exchange these goods.
This exchange can be in a commercial relationship in which I speculate the needs of the other, and based on them, I take advantage because the more they increase, the more expensive I can make the price. Or in an exchange of gratuitousness, of attention to the brother's needs, and if I can satisfy his hunger, I am willing to give him what I have. What answer does Jesus give? He rejects the proposal of the disciples that everyone should fend for themselves and go where they sell what they need.
Let us try to reflect on what happens in the disciples' proposal. Those who have money can buy, not those who have not; they are still hungry. He with good legs can go where those who sell are, but the sick cannot. Then some run faster than the others; they reach there first and buy everything because they can, but those who arrive last cannot find anything. Some know where to go; those who do not know where to go are lost.
No wonder, in this old world, driven by this market logic, wars, violence, and injustice arise, where those who can accumulate, those who are rich become richer and richer, and the poor remain poorer and poorer. This is the reality of our world, which needs force, violence, threats, and weapons to maintain this logic. What Jesus says to the disciples, he says to us. You must feed them. First, Jesus rejects the logic separating life into two sectors, the spiritual and the material, as if the material is left to our care.
The word of God, the Gospel, demands a new world and way of managing goods. The word of God tells us, first of all, that the goods are not ours; they cannot be negotiated according to the criteria of the market because the goods belong to God.
We are only stewards. "The earth is the Lord's and the things that are in it," says Psalm 24, and in the first letter to Timothy, chapter 6, "we brought nothing into this world and can take nothing with us." Everything is requisitioned at the customs. This letter to Timothy says that greed for money and lust for the accumulation of goods is folly and the root of all evil. The disciples have understood where Jesus wants to lead them, to this exodus, to the sharing of goods, to the exchange of goods dictated not by greed and selfishness, but by love, by the attention to the needs of the brethren. Still, they immediately raise an objection, which is ours. Let us listen:
They replied, "Five loaves and two fish are all we have unless we go and buy food for all these people." Now, the men there numbered about five thousand. Then he told his disciples, "Have them sit down in groups of about fifty." They did so and made them all sit down."
The objection of the disciples is our objection, which we hear continually: there is no food for all; the food is negligible and the multitude immense. If we allow ourselves to doubt that there will be enough for all, then the competition begins. The temptation is to think that God didn't create a world in which his sons and daughters are satisfied and have what they need in the abundance of what they need... NO. Everything is a vale of tears... So, it is understandable that everyone tries to hoard what is possible... to have enough for themselves, their families and friends, and others to manage by themselves. That's the temptation. In the wilderness, they had manna. Some accumulated more than enough for their daily need, but that manna was filled with worms by the evening.
The disciples think that Jesus' proposal is beautiful, putting everything in common, but it does not give any result. So, they made another proposal. We continue to live in the law of the market, which is that of the old world that they go and buy food for all these people, a crowd of five thousand men. It is the proposal of assistance: those who have something more drop their alms for the needy. Jesus does not accept this proposal because it is the one that does not give the definitive solution; it does not create a new world; it maintains the old world of the laws of the market. This assistance is not inadequate; at least those who have more give something to the needy, but it is not God's new world.
What does Jesus propose now? He commands the disciples, "Have them sit down" - Κατακλίνατε - Kataklínate - have them lie down. This is the position of the master, of the free people who are served, and Jesus invites the disciples to consider all the needy as their masters, that the true disciple is willing to serve. And he says, "Have them recline in groups of fifty." In the book of Exodus, this number indicates a people that is organized; that is to say, this distribution of the goods that God has placed in the land available for the life of his children must be managed according to orderly criteria in such a way that the food is sufficient and abundant for all.
Now, we hear what happens when the good things God has prepared for his children are managed according to the Gospel. Let us listen:
"Then, taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets."
We have heard the list of the five gestures performed by Jesus. The evangelist Luke has presented them to us in an exact way because they contain the new proposal for the administration of this world's goods made by Jesus. It is no longer about the old logic but a new logic, and we will examine these gestures well because they teach us to realize a prodigy. So that in the world every human hunger be satisfied. And that the goods available to every person are not only sufficient but abundant; all forms of violence, war, injustice, and misery may disappear. If this were to happen, we would say it is a miracle.
God does not perform this miracle; he teaches us to accomplish it. If it does not happen, we ignore the gestures with which Jesus teaches us to perform this miracle. The first of these gestures: Jesus takes the five loaves and the two fishes; 5 plus 2 = 7, indicates the totality of goods for humanity, represented by the 5,000; it delivers the new logic which is not that of the laws of the market but the law of love, of the logic of gift. Therefore, we surrender all we have at our disposal, not to the logic of selfishness and greed, but to love.
Second gesture: Jesus raises his eyes to heaven. It is the invitation to recognize where all goods in the world and at our disposal come from. They are not ours; they are God's. Even life is not ours, it is a gift, and we cannot deny it; no one can give life to himself. You can do anything, climb Mount Everest, but you cannot give yourself life. Life is a gift.
The uplifted gaze means to recognize that everything is God's. This is the truth; the feeling of ownership is a lie; keeping goods for oneself and hoarding them for oneself is theft. This is the heavenward gaze necessary for us to perform this miracle so that all may have what is needed, not only enough but also abundance. The time of the death of God, when it was thought that to be human, it was necessary to eliminate God, has passed, but let us ask ourselves if we eliminate this look to heaven, which is to recognize that we are not patrons but guests, who can stop me from following the logic of the old world, which is precisely what we see, unfortunately, still prevailing in our world today? And from this old-world logic, all problems arise. We should not skip any steps; otherwise, the wonder will not happen.
Third gesture: Blessing. To bless means to recognize where life comes from. From the gaze to heaven, the blessing is expected; all that comes from God is for life. Therefore, this blessing means the refusal of the use of this world for what God does not want, that is, for death, because from God only comes life, and the goods of this world can only be employed for life; therefore, they cannot be used as weapons, for poisons, for destruction. This is a 'curse.' This is the third gesture: Never use goods that are not ours but God's for that which is not life.
Fourth gesture: Jesus breaks them. He does it to share and give them to the disciples, those who are called to build this new world in which we follow the logic of love. And here is the result: everybody eats their fill, and there are still twelve baskets; the food is superabundant. Here is the prodigy. If this prodigy does not occur, the fault is that we have no faith in this proposal that Jesus makes to us. We adhere, maybe a little bit, but then we go on with the old logic, hoping to solve the problems; with old logic we create the problem because we do not trust the Gospel.
One last message that he gives us is by picking up these leftovers—overabundance, but not waste. God's goods cannot be wasted; they are not ours, and we know how great this sin of waste is; how much food is produced and not used or are perfectly useless products taxed by fashion. These are not actual primary, real needs but induced needs; then, we waste food, water, energy, and resources that could be used for something much more severe, urgent, and important. We live in an economic model in which the superfluous has become necessary; we are outside the owner's design, who is God.
The Eucharist has to do with all this. At the last Supper, Jesus knows that he has come to the end of his life; he wants to leave the disciples the sign of his history, of his person, so he takes the bread and says, 'This is me - my whole life has been to be bread, I have spared nothing, not even a moment of my life that has not been given for life, for love.' And then he says to the disciples: 'Take and eat'; 'assimilate me, assimilate my story.'
I believe that by presenting these gestures of Jesus and, together with them, the invitation to perform this miracle that, according to Jesus, is possible to do, we think that Jesus is a dreamer and that this will never come true. By inviting us to eat that bread, Jesus tells us, 'If you assimilate my love story, this new world will be built.' Jesus’ new world is not a dream. Whoever thinks it is a dream will drop his arms and remain on the sidelines of the story that God wants to build. Still, he who authentically approaches the Eucharist, who assimilates the life, the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth, becomes a builder of this world in which life among people is a life of brothers and sisters, children of the one Father who shares with love, who respond with love to the vital needs of their brothers and sisters.
I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.
No comments:
Post a Comment