THE gospel readings in the next five Sundays all come from the sixth chapter of John. Collectively known as the Bread of Life Discourse, they reveal Jesus’ identity as the Living Bread who came down from heaven.
The first segment of the chapter, which is this Sunday’s gospel (John 6:1-15), is an allusion to a similar story in the Old Testament (First Reading; 2 Kings 4:42-44), where Elisha, the prophet of God, was able to feed a hundred people, beginning with only twenty loaves of barley. In like manner, in the gospel, Jesus was able to feed a large crowd of about five thousand men with only five loaves and two fish to start with. In both cases, after the people had their fill, there were collected some leftovers.
In these moving stories, we see that God cared enough to satisfy the hunger of his people. In their hour of need, he fed them. And in feeding them, God worked through the generosity of people who contributed whatever little they may have had to help others – the man from Baal-shalishah, who brought to Elisha twenty barley loaves, and the boy who offered Jesus, through Andrew, five barley loaves and two fish.
Of course, God could have fed the people himself, requiring no human cooperation. He could just have spoken to create food out of nothing. He is God, and for him nothing is impossible. Yet, in these two cases, he chose to manifest his love and power in partnership with the charity shown by the two people to their fellowmen. He chose to feed his people in tandem with the generosity and selflessness of others.
The food portions that the man and the boy contributed were so little in proportion to the needs of a hundred people and a thousand men, respectively. Yet in the eyes of God, nothing offered in love becomes useless. We remember, for instance, how the poor widow’s offering of two small copper coins out of her poverty (Luke 21:1-4) was more appreciated than the gifts of the rich who offered much, but only out of their wealth.
The modest contributions of the man and the boy– very insignificant in the eyes of the world – were made grand by the power of God. Divine intervention multiplied the loaves and the fish more than what the hungry crowd needed to be satiated.
Thousands of years after these events had happened, we still see a world of wide economic disparities – with some societies (or even sectors within the same society) living in affluence and extravagance, while others live in poverty and lack of the most basic things for human survival. While many in the population become obese because of gluttony and food abuse, the United Nations has reported that in the year 2016, about 815 million people of the 7.6 billion people in the world suffered from chronic hunger and undernourishment.
How do we solve this shameful problem? How do we reverse this pitiful reality?
The practical answers have always been difficult, but this Sunday’s gospel prescribes the overarching framework upon which the interventions of nations, governments, organizations and individuals can anchor their solutions to the world’s humungous problems on poverty and hunger. To address these problems, the Scriptures teach us that man has to conquer his selfishness and be motivated to share what he can for the promotion of the common good. This is not, by any means, the adoption of a dole-out mentality, for any man’s contribution is not necessarily limited to material things. Time, talent, skills, knowledge, and other resources, when shared for the development of others, could also set into motion the chain reaction that brings about positive change.
In the same vein, following the examples of the man and the boy who offered their loaves to the hands of God, the fight against poverty and hunger can only succeed if human interventions are made subject to the sovereign power of God. As the Word of God reminds us, “Many are the plans of the human heart, but it is the decision of the Lord that endures” (Proverbs 19:21). Commendable as the world’s solutions to her problems may be, they can only find fruition in the grace of God. As the psalmist sings, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (Psalm 127:1).