José Ricardo Bezerra and Felipe Bezerra
We arrive at the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, and this Sunday’s Gospel brings us the first multiplication of the loaves, narrated by Saint Matthew (Mt 14:13-21). It is a scene that all four Gospels preserved, a sign of how deeply it marked the memory of the Church: five loaves and two fish to satisfy about five thousand men, not counting the women and children (cf. Mt 14:21; Jn 6:1-15).
At the center of it all is a word that runs through the whole page: compassion. Jesus sees the crowd and is filled with compassion, and it is from there that the miracle is born. As always, we have chosen five points for your meditation and prayer, which we share in the podcast: https://youtu.be/loxNGhKSvwE (with subtitles in your language). Take your Bible, open it to Matthew 14:13-21, read the passage slowly, and come back to listen and pray with us.
1. The crowds heard of it, went out, and followed him
The first point is right at the beginning. Jesus had withdrawn by boat to a deserted place, upon learning of the death of John the Baptist (cf. Mt 14:13). But “the crowds heard of it and followed him on foot from the towns” (Mt 14:13). Three small verbs hold within them an entire path of prayer: to hear, to go out, and to follow.
First, they heard. They came to know where Jesus was. We too need to know where the Lord is: in our heart, in his Church, in the Eucharist. Prayer begins with this awareness, that the Master is here and is calling us (cf. Jn 11:28). Then, they went out. Not everyone went out; some remained settled in the city and did not see Jesus pass by. Prayer always demands a going out of oneself, an unsettling. And finally, they followed. Perhaps they were still seeking the miracle and healing, but they took the first step, and the Lord does not send them away. This is the goal of all prayer: to follow Jesus so as to resemble him and to be like him (cf. Rom 8:29).
2. Jesus saw the crowd and had compassion
When he disembarked, “Jesus saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and cured their sick” (Mt 14:14). This word, “compassion,” is the heart of today’s Gospel, and it reappears in the Responsorial Psalm: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ps 145:8). Compassion is not merely feeling sorry. The Greek word used here (splanchnízomai) speaks of the “entrails,” of a visceral mercy that springs from the depths of the heart. And passion, in its Latin root (patior), means to suffer. Compassion, then, is to suffer with. Jesus does not look on from the outside: he takes upon himself, as his own, the suffering of those people. He says, in silence, to each one: this suffering of yours is also mine.
The first act of this compassion is the healing of the sick. We too can ask for healing, including the interior healing of so many wounds, from childhood, from traumas, from old stories. To ask is natural and good. But we present our need to God so that He may heal in his own time, without forcing him, because no one forces God (cf. 2Cor 12:7-9). Sometimes the Lord leaves the mark. Risen, he himself kept his wounds, now glorious (cf. Jn 20:27). Our scar may remain so that we can say to others: I too suffered, I too was healed. To Saint Paul, who three times begged for the removal of the thorn in the flesh, the Lord replied: “My grace is sufficient for you” (2Cor 12:9).
Here a word of truth about the spiritual life is fitting. To grow in holiness is not to cease being vulnerable nor to stop needing healing. Our sin is always before us (cf. Ps 51:5), and the whole person was wounded by original sin, with human nature weakened by ignorance, by suffering, and by the inclination to evil, in need of grace to be healed (cf. CCC 405). Nor is there any protective shield that keeps the chosen from all suffering: one need only look at Saint Paul, stoned and tested so many times (cf. 2Cor 11:24-28). To Saint Teresa of Ávila, who suffered so much, it is said that the Lord told her: “This is how I treat my friends,” and she is said to have replied: “If this is how you treat them, it is no wonder you have so few.” In the face of everything, what remains is to present our misery, and the response of Jesus is always compassion.
3. Give them some food yourselves
As evening fell, the disciples ask Jesus to send the crowd away. He replies: “There is no need for them to go away. Give them some food yourselves” (Mt 14:16). It is a command. Jesus wants to involve the disciples in the concrete care of those people.
This care for material bread runs through all of Scripture. In the Our Father we ask for our daily bread (cf. Mt 6:11); in Matthew 25, Christ himself is identified with the hungry: “I was hungry and you gave me food…” (Mt 25:35). Not always did Jesus multiply the bread, it is true, and we are not responsible for all the hunger in the world. But here He commands it, explicitly, and he commanded it also to his Church. For this reason, later, the Apostles instituted the seven deacons for the service of the tables and the widows, while they devoted themselves to the Word (cf. Acts 6:1-6). Of this service to the poor Saint Lawrence, deacon, is the icon, for he presented the poor as the true treasure of the Church.
Care for the poor was not born in the Industrial Revolution. It came to the fore then, with the Social Doctrine of the Church, but it was already lived from the beginning, as the Fathers teach, Saint John Chrysostom among them. The Social Doctrine is neither ideology nor party program; it is doctrine, the light of the morality of the Gospel upon life (cf. CCC 2419-2425). From Leo XIII, with Rerum Novarum, to his successors down to Pope Leo XIV, in the face of new questions such as that of Artificial Intelligence, the Church continues to shed light on justice and the dignity of work. Among the sins that cry out to heaven is precisely the wage withheld from the worker (cf. Jas 5:4; CCC 1867).
In Saint John’s account, the one who offers the five loaves and the two fish is a boy (cf. Jn 6:9), someone who did not even count, just as the women and the children were not counted. The one who offered the basis of the miracle was not in the count. This undoes the false humility that is, at bottom, self-depreciation: to say “I am worth nothing” is not humility, it is untruth. Humility is truth. Before God, the little we offer, when given with love, becomes the matter of a miracle.
And what did the disciples have? “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here” (Mt 14:17). This little is what we too are invited to place in the hands of Jesus: our poverty, our misery. Jesus has compassion on the hungry crowd and on the disciples, whose hearts are still closed, and he trains them to open their hearts and to be like his.
4. The eucharistic sign
We arrive at the greatest act of compassion of Jesus in this Gospel, the eucharistic sign. He orders the crowd to sit down on the grass, takes the five loaves and the two fish and, looking up to heaven, says the blessing, breaks the loaves, and gives them to the disciples so that they may distribute them (cf. Mt 14:19). Keep these gestures: he took, he gave thanks, he broke, he gave. They are exactly the gestures and the words that Jesus will repeat at the Last Supper (cf. Mt 26:26). To give thanks, in Greek, is eucharistéo. Jesus “eucharistizes” the loaves.
Here it is not yet the Eucharist as we receive it today, but it is already a most powerful sign, a prefiguration of what was to come. It is the bread announced in the discourse of the Bread of Life, in the Synagogue of Capernaum: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever” (Jn 6:51). Faced with this hard saying, many disciples turned away, but Peter confessed: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68).
The scene also evokes the manna in the desert, the daily bread that God sent and that could not be hoarded (cf. Ex 16:4, 19-20), and the Psalm of the Good Shepherd: in verdant pastures he makes me lie down and prepares a table before my enemies (cf. Ps 23:2, 5). And the invitation of Isaiah: Come, buy without money (cf. Is 55:1-3), the first reading of this Sunday. For this reason we give thanks in a special way for the Eucharist: it is in the service of the ordained ministry that the Church receives and sacramentally distributes this gift. And we praise God for the priesthood, on this first Sunday of August.
5. They all ate and were satisfied
“They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over, twelve wicker baskets full” (Mt 14:20). Here a question imposes itself, because the text is silent: did they give thanks? Did they praise God for having been satisfied? Did they have faith in Jesus after the miracle?
The Gospel does not say that they gave praise. They ate, they were satisfied, and that was all. And soon after, in Capernaum, Jesus will rebuke them: you are looking for me because you ate the loaves and were satisfied (cf. Jn 6:26). In the face of so many signs, of so many daily miracles, do we have the disposition to praise and give thanks? How often we receive, above all the Eucharist, and do not give thanks.
This is the final invitation of today’s Gospel: to ask for the compassionate heart of Jesus and, satisfied by Him, not to move on without praising and giving thanks for the blessings of each day. May the Lord give us a heart like his, and the grace to recognize, to give thanks, and to praise for all that we receive from him, above all for the Eucharist, which is He himself.
Until next week!
Shalom!
From Monday to Saturday, we have a short video; on Sunday, our podcast with the Sunday Gospel for you to meditate and pray. Subscribe to the channel and invite others, so that more people may love the Word of God. Leave your “like” and forward it to your friends. God bless you. Shalom!
Podcast video: https://youtu.be/loxNGhKSvwE with subtitles that you can select in your language.
Steps of the Lectio Divina
The Lectio Divina is the prayerful reading of the Word of God. Set aside a time of silence, invoke the Holy Spirit, and go slowly through these steps, praying yourself with this Gospel.
1. Reading (Lectio). What does the text say?
Read attentively, in a low voice, the passage of Mt 14:13-21, observing who acts, what Jesus does, and what the central words are.
2. Meditation (Meditatio). What does the text say to me?
Let a word touch your heart. Where do I need to hear, to go out, and to follow? Where do I ask for the compassion of Jesus? What little do I have to place in his hands? Have I given that little which is all I have?
3. Prayer (Oratio). What do I say to God from the text?
Respond to the Lord in your own words: present your wounds, ask for healing, give thanks for the daily bread and, above all, for the Eucharist. Do not move on without praising.
4. Contemplation (Contemplatio). What new gaze does God give me?
Remain in silence before the compassionate heart of Jesus, letting yourself be looked upon by Him and receiving his gaze upon your life and upon those who suffer around you.
5. Action (Actio). To what does the Lord call me today?
Choose a concrete gesture: an act of mercy toward someone who hungers for bread or for a listening ear, a gesture of gratitude to God, a communion well prepared and given in thanksgiving.
