



Yet every year we are subjected to homilies that try to explain it away as a natural event, suggesting that all Jesus really did was motivate people to share the food that they had with them, so it was really a "miracle of sharing" rather than a miraculous multiplication of loaves.

I've written about the subject before, but let's see what Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II have to say about the matter . . .


Pope Benedict on the Miracle

Recently I was delighted to discover that Pope Benedict has been discussing the miracle in his Sunday Angeluses . . . er, Angeli . . . er, Angelus messages. Here's what he had to say earlier this summer:


A boy’s presence is also mentioned in the scene of the multiplication. On perceiving the problem of feeding so many hungry people, he shared the little he had brought with him: five loaves and two fish (cf. Jn 6:9).




However the people stopped at the material element, which they had eaten, and the Lord “perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king,... withdrew again to the hills by himself” (Jn 6:15).


So Pope Benedict sees the miracle in the traditional (and obvious) way, as a multiplication of loaves.

He stressed the same thing the next week:





And he stressed it the week after that, this time adding that it was Jesus himself who satisfied the hunger of the five thousand though a miracle he worked that miraculously satisfied their physical hunger. They didn't satisfy their own hunger by passing around the food they had with them.



And most recently he spoke specifically of Jesus satisfying their hunger with fives loaves and two fish:

On the past few Sundays we have meditated on the “Bread of Life” discourse, which Jesus gave in the Synagogue of Capernaum after satisfying the hunger of thousands of people with five loaves and two fish [Angelus, August 26, 2012].


John Paul II on the Miracle

I don't want to have an unnecessary multiplication of quotations, but I would like to add a couple from John Paul II that show this isn't just a "Benedict thing." Back in 1982, he told the youth of Scotland:

There is an episode in the life of Saint Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, which can serve as an example for what I wish to tell you. Jesus had been teaching a crowd of five thousand people about the Kingdom of God.

They had listened carefully all day, and as evening approached he did not want to send them away hungry, so he told his disciples to give them something to eat.

He said this really to test them, because he knew exactly what he was going to do.

One of the disciples - it was Saint Andrew - said: “There is a small boy here with five barley loaves and two fishes; but what is that between so many?”

Jesus took the loaves, blessed them, and gave them out to all who were sitting waiting; he then did the same with the fish, giving out as much as was wanted. Later the disciples collected twelve baskets of the fragments that were left over.

Now the point I wish to make is this: Saint Andrew gave Jesus all there was available, and Jesus miraculously fed those five thousand people and still had something left over [Address to the Young People of Scotland, May 31, 1982].

Note that John Paul II doesn't just say that Jesus used the five loaves and two fish, he specifies that they were "all there was available." So people didn't bring out the food they were had stashed under their cloaks and start passing it around. What the boy had was what was available. Of course, some people might have had food with them, but it wasn't available for what Jesus was doing, which was a real, physical miracle.

And it's a miracle with spiritual implications. Pope Benedict mentioned that it points to Jesus as the Bread of Life, and that it shows what God can do with our little when we turn to him. John Paul II dwells on the latter point in a particularly moving way:

It is exactly the same with your lives. Left alone to face the difficult challenges of life today, you feel conscious of your inadequacy and afraid of what the future may hold for you.


In other words: surrender yourselves, like so many loaves and fishes, into the all-powerful, sustaining hands of God and you will find yourselves transformed with “newness of life”, with fullness of life. “Unload your burden on the Lord, and he will support you”.

Now can we please not have any more of the "miracle of sharing" homilies?



By the Way . . .

If you're interested in fascinating things that the pope has to say, you should join my Secret Information Club.

It's is a free service that I operate by email.



He has a lot of interesting things to say!



In the meantime, what do you think?