The Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, July 25, 2021

John 6:1–15

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. The Jewish feast of Passover was near. When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” Jesus said, “Have the people recline.” Now there was a great deal of grass in that place. So the men reclined, about five thousand in number. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples, “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat. When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.” Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.

The Lord Jesus performs the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand in such a way that parallels stand out between what he does and what Moses did long before.  This enables the Apostles, at least, to understand the meaning of his action.  Now, the Lord times this miracle for proximity to the Feast of the Passover, and so the events of the Passover would have been present in the people’s minds just then.  First, the Lord crossed the Sea of Galilee.  Doubtless, he did this in a boat, but he crossed it and a large crowd of people followed him across.  They followed him because of the cures he had performed.  Likewise, the Hebrews followed Moses across a sea after having seen Moses perform powerful signs.  But whereas the signs of Moses were plagues inflicted on the Egyptians, the signs of Jesus are healings he performs on the Chosen People.  And then Jesus goes up a mountain, as Moses went up Mount Sinai.  We know from St. Mark’s account of the same miracle that on the mountain the Lord “began to teach them many things” (Mark 6, 34).  Likewise, Moses had received the Law from Almighty God on Mount Sinai.  And the Lord knows that the people, there in the wilderness, are hungry, and he feeds them.  Moses had heard the people’s cries of hunger and God had fed them manna from heaven, as much as they could eat.

The Lord shows how Moses prefigured him, and how he himself surpasses Moses, as the true Leader of the Chosen People.  Through subsequent Sundays we will hear the Lord declaring that the Father has now rained down the True Bread from heaven, that Jesus is this Bread, and that those who eat this Bread — the Lord’s Body — will live forever.  Finally, we will see that many of his followers will “walk no more” with him because they reject his teaching.  They reject the Lord as their Leader just as so many Hebrews rejected the Lord and Moses as they were about to enter the Promised Land, fearful of what might lie ahead: “Would to God that we had died in Egypt: and would to God we may die in this vast wilderness, and that the Lord may not bring us into this land” (Numbers 14, 13).  On that occasion, the Lord declared to the rebels, “Your children shall wander in the desert forty years, and shall bear your rebellion, until the carcasses of their fathers be consumed in the desert” (Numbers 14, 33).  These wandered futilely into the desert for forty years and died.  They prefigured those who would reject the Lord Jesus who offers a Promised Land of eternal happiness, and so these, in their rejection of him, will suffer in hell forever.  The King lays out his Feast, and those who wish to belong to him hasten to it.