18thSunday Yr A
(Matthew’s Gospel - Multiplication of Loaves)
The Gospel today is from St. Matthew. He describes the miracle of Jesus feeding thousands on a few loaves and fish. This miracle is a prefigurement of the miracle of the Holy Eucharist.
One interpretation of this miracle is my favorite, because I think it is the most theologically correct. This interpretation holds that Jesus did not multiply the loaves of bread. He fed thousands on just five loaves. Rather, He multiplied the presence of the five loaves.The same miracle is recorded in the Gospel of St. John, who makes it clear that Our Lord fed thousands on just five loaves: “they filled 12 baskets of fragments from the 5 barley loaves.”
What do I mean when I say that Jesus multiplied the presence of the 5 loaves? Well, imagine having five long loaves of Italian bread, and with each loaf of bread you keep breaking off pieces enough to feed about a thousand people. Then you are able to feed 5000 people with just five loaves.
I think this is a good interpretation of the miracle Jesus performs in the Gospel we hear today because, as I already said, this miracle is a prefigurement of the Holy Eucharist.
How so? In the miracle of the Eucharist, after the priest says the words of consecration over the bread and wine, Jesus is really, truly present, in the substance of His Body and Blood, in each consecrated Host. It is not Jesus who is multiplied; there is not a different Jesus in every consecrated Host; rather, the same Jesus is present in every Host; the presence of Our Lord's Body and Blood is multiplied so that each consecrated Host, even the smallest particle of a Host, is truly the whole Jesus: His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. It is not Jesus that is multiplied but His presence that is multiplied.
The very notion of “presence” is a mystery. This is one of the reasons why the Church calls the miracle of the Eucharist the Mysterium fidei – the Mystery of our faith. I will demonstrate this by a simple analogy. The words that I am speaking right now are present to each one of you through the medium of sound waves. My words are not being multiplied; rather, the presence of my words is multiplied.
If I were being videotaped right now, both my image and my words could be present, and seen and heard, on televisions throughout the world. I would not be multiplied, but my image and my same words would be made present to different people in different places through the medium of sound and image technology.
Throughout the ages, the great saints and commentators on this Gospel passage have seen the miracle of Christ feeding thousands on a few loaves of fish as a prefigurement to the miracle of Our Lord's Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist.
Let us turn now to the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, which offers us with further food for thought. Isaiah says, “All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!”The Church chooses this reading to accompany Matthew's Gospel today because Isaiah's words are a prophecy of both the Eucharistic wedding banquet that we celebrate at Mass, and the heavenly wedding banquet in which we all hope to participate in eternity. Both the wedding banquet at Mass and the wedding banquet in Heaven are celebrations of the mystical marriage between Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom, and the Church, His glorious Bride.
Moreover, the Mass itself is a participation in the heavenly wedding banquet. All are invited to participate at no cost, whether rich or poor, whether one is a king or a pauper.
At the Mass, the earthly wedding banquet, we receive Christ’s Body and Blood as food to nourish our souls for our spiritual journey through this life, to keep us in union with Jesus and to enable us to love God and neighbor as Jesus Himself loves God His Father and us.
Also, the Eucharist is the food which guarantees us eternal life in the Kingdom; for Jesus says, “Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
In Heaven we will have no need to receive Christ's Body and Blood, because there we will be fully incorporated into Christ as members of His Mystical Body, the Church. There, in Heaven, the mystical marriage between Christ and His Church will be consummated. We will maintain our individuality, but we will be fully in Christ and He will be in us, and through Him in the unity of Holy Spirit we will be one with the Father.
Here on Earth that oneness, that union with Jesus is attained most perfectly in and through reception of His Body and Blood in the Eucharist. This is why we call reception of the Eucharist “Holy Communion” – that is, a holy union with Our Lord, Jesus Christ, the holiest of all unions this side of Heaven!
In June of 2011, on the feast of Corpus Christi, Pope Benedict XVI offered us some beautiful words to contemplate on the mystery of the Eucharist. He said that the Eucharist “makes a human community into a mystery of communion that can bring God to the world and the world to God. The Holy Spirit, who transforms the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, also transforms whoever receives It with faith into a member of the Body of Christ so that the Church is truly the sacrament of unity, of men with God and among themselves.”
The Pope went on to say: “In an ever more individualistic culture, such as the one in which we are immersed in Western society and which tends to spread throughout the world, the Eucharist constitutes a sort of ‘antidote’ that works in the minds and hearts of believers and continually sows in them the logic of communion, service, and sharing, in short, the logic of the Gospel.” The Eucharist as an “antidote” for our individualistic culture – how beautiful!
Let us strive, in receiving the Eucharist today, to be those sowers of love and service that God desires us to be!
1