What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve
When the crowd fail to respond to the miracle properly, they show Our Lord to be the New Moses in spite of themselves.
When the crowd fail to respond to the miracle properly, they show Our Lord to be the New Moses in spite of themselves.
Editor’s Notes
As previously mentioned, Our Lord worked this miracle in order to elevate them to seeking the more perfect “bread” which he was to give the world – himself.
And there are other examples of miracles in Scripture which show us the response he expects from us: the abandonment of our own, old way of living, and adherence to him.
But this is not the response which he received from the crowd. While the people wanted to be fed like the Israelites in the desert, they resembled more the grumbling and murmuring of that people at the time.
One thing this shows us is that Our Lord is treated as a New Moses in spite of themselves, even by those who fail to accept him.
For more on this series, see Part I.
Faith in the Son of Man
The Training of the Apostles, Part IV
Chapter X
St. John vi. 25–72; Story of the Gospels, § 74
Burns and Oates, London, 1885.
(Read on Corpus Christi)
The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested
What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve
The meat that perisheth
‘Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto life everlasting, which the Son of Man will give you.’
If their desire had been listened to, they would gladly have gone on day after day, receiving the bountiful provision which had once been granted them by God. But this was not the true benefit which He intended them to receive from the miracle which they had witnessed.
When He says, ‘Labour not for the meat that perisheth, but for that which endureth,’ He does not mean them to take no care for their temporal sustenance, according to the disposition of Providence, by which men are born to labour in this world, and by which the means of daily sustenance are necessarily the first natural object of the majority of mankind. It is He that has made the effect of earthly food only temporary, in order that we may again and again feel the same needs, and by them be driven to that labour of providing for ourselves and our families which is the common lot of us all.
But He means that this is not to be the chief object of our industry, for the sustenance of the soul is a higher thing than that of the body, and temporal things must so be cared for that we may at the same time be acquiring eternal goods.
Spiritualizing effect of miracles – the spouses of Cana
Now the intention of God in granting the miracle was not to provide for the temporal sustenance of the multitude, but first to use their necessities to draw out the compassion of our Lord, and then to use this miracle of compassion to draw their hearts to faith in Him, so that they might receive the Bread of Life which was foreshadowed and represented by the loaves which had been multiplied.
After such a miracle their hearts should have flown to higher things, and not lingered over the temporal benefits which they had received.
An old tradition tells us that the bridegroom and bride at the marriage in Cana came, after the miracle of the water changed into wine in their favour, to throw themselves at our Lord’s feet, to offer themselves as His disciples, and that from that moment they resolved, in gratitude for the manifestation of His power, to live in continence as brother and sister.
This old tradition represents the elevating and purifying effect which our Lord’s miracles were meant to have on those in whose favour they were wrought. Thus we read that after the miraculous fishing by the Apostles, at the word of our Lord, they left all, and followed Him.1 There may have been something of the same kind in the effect on the mind of the man out of whom the legion of devils was cast, when he begged our Lord to let him remain in His company.2
These are instances in which temporal blessings, miraculously received, served to raise the mind to higher things, and to nerve the will to loftier and holier attempts in God’s service. Such is the effect ordinarily intended by God when such benefits are bestowed.
The Gift of the Son of Man
Our Lord’s words show that He at once perceived the deficiency in their aims and desires, their failure to correspond to the designs of God, a failure which might easily render them incapable of the further boon He had to bestow.
His own Heart was dwelling on that Heavenly Food which He was preparing for the world, which had been prefigured in the manna given to their fathers, as well as in the loaves and fishes which had been made the subject of the last miracle. No doubt He was disappointed to find their minds so ill-prepared for the revelation and promise concerning this Heavenly Bread of which the miracle had been as it were the first note.
It is as if He had said:
‘The Son of Man has better food for you than that which you have now received on the mountain-side across the lake. It is not meat that perisheth, which has to be continually renewed, day after day, which, after all, can only support this temporal and passing life. It is Bread that abides in Its effects throughout all eternity, long after It has ceased to be administered to you day after day in the Church which I am to found.’
The words ‘which the Son of Man will give you,’ imply that they did well to come to Him, if they had come for the right purpose, and in search of the right kind of food.
It was quite true that He had drawn them to Himself by the gift of temporal food. But they need not go to any one but Him for the true and living Bread which was to endure to everlasting life.
‘Sealed’ by the Father
The reason why He will give this food is, that God the Father has sealed Him, that is, as it appears, that God the Father has conferred on Him His own Godhead, because He has united to the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ the Divine Person of His own Son, and therefore ‘sealed’ it with His Divinity.
From this it follows that Jesus Christ is God and Man, and therefore most perfectly the giver of the Food of eternal life. The order of the words in the Greek is, ‘for Him hath the Father sealed, God,’ as if to express more forcibly that the sealing consists in the Divine union of God and Man in the Person of our Lord, as if it had been said, for Him hath His Father sealed with the Divine Nature.
There can be no participation or imparting of life everlasting, but by some communication with God, Who is alone Life, and the Author of life. And He Who is Life in Himself must be alone able to impart life to others, in whatever way or measure it seems good to Him. But the miracle of the loaves was, in the intention of our Lord, a promise and a pledge that He would feed man in the most perfect and lasting way, and this can only be by the strengthening of the weak and failing human nature by some Divine food, which would give eternal life.
As the healing of the diseases of the body was a promise and a prophecy of the healing of the diseases of the soul, so the refection of the body by the miraculous bread was a promise that God not only could furnish food unto eternal life, but that in His own time and way He would do so.
This then is the Bread that it is worth while to work for, to aim at, to seek, to pray for, and the Person from Whom it was to be sought was He Who had wrought the material miracle, and Who, being sealed with the seal of the Divinity, must have the power of feeding unto eternal life, while His compassion for their bodily wants showed His willingness so to do. This willingness is now solemnly professed and declared by our Lord in the words before us.
All these considerations are included in the words of our Lord about His own ‘sealing’ by God the Father.
Faith in the Son of Man
The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested
What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve
Previous Chapter:
The Discourse in the Synagogue
How Our Lord gradually unveiled the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist
How Jesus used the loaves to explain his doctrine to the people – and to us
How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd
How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist
From:
The Training of the Apostles, Part IV
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St. Luke v. 11.
St. Luke viii. 38.