Homily for John 6:1-15 Seventeenth Sunday

Today we start a break in our reading of the Gospel of St. Mark for a reading of the 6th chapter of St. John’s Gospel. For the next six weeks our Sunday Gospel will be taken from this remarkable Chapter. In fact, this chapter is the great teaching of St. John on the Holy Eucharist. In the other Gospels, the Eucharist is shown only at the Last Supper, but here in St. John, we have a fuller account of Christ’s Eucharistic teachings—the Bread of Life Discourse.
Today in John 6, Jesus multiples the loaves and the fishes for the five thousand gathered to listen to his teachings. This miracle was performed not just to feed hungry bellies, but to prepare his listeners for an even greater miracle-the giving of His own body and blood for our true food. Jesus wants to teach us, by first drawing our attention to what is most immediate to us-food. To fill and satisfy our hunger is a very real need, a need we all have; it is the most basic of all instincts. The people listening to Jesus were hungry and were perhaps being distracted from listening to Jesus teach them by their hunger pains. This reminds me that St. Francis once said, “you can’t preach the Gospel to empty stomachs.” For us humans, even at the earliest age, hunger is present; when we were an infant for example, as soon as we felt hunger pains, we began to cry and our mother fed us. Even as we are older, hunger pains can be no less traumatic. Those who experienced being held in concentration camps during World War II, said that as prisoners, they could ignore the cold or their aches and pains, but their constant hunger consumed them, and food occupied their every thought, even their dreams. When we are hungry, nothing else can take our mind off our hunger, only food can satisfy us. I bet even at this very moment many of us here are thinking about what we are going to eat after Mass. Jesus desired the hungry in the Gospel to experience their need and dependence, their hunger, so that they might then learn to depend on Him to satisfy, not only their hunger but all of their desires-Jesus is the only one who can fill our deepest needs and desires.
Jesus knows their natural hunger- again the most basic desire on a physical level, but He wants to show us that spiritual hunger is even more fundamental. Jesus desired for the people of His day to receive his teachings and so come to believe that He was a Divine Person--God. Yet, the people resisted and so stayed only on a physical level; they could only think of their bellies- they wanted Jesus to become king-as it were the chief baker for the country, one who would give them only earthly food & prosperity. But Jesus had another food in mind.
Jesus wanted to give them the only food that could satisfy that very deepest of all hunger, the hunger for love. Every Human heart longs for, is hungry for Love and only love can make it truly happy—nothing else will satisfy it. This food of Jesus, the only food that can really satisfy our hunger for love is the Eucharist- the gift of his very self, He who is the source of all love, human and divine. IN other words, Jesus is the food we are hungering for—the Eucharist is the food we are starving for—for the Eucharist is Love—for the Eucharist is God.
In our miracle, Jesus not only gave bread, but gave it in superabundance; there were twelve baskets of leftovers. With care, the apostles gathered them so none would go to waste. Their example of a deep respect for even a basic food, teaches us how much more there needs to be respect with regards to the Eucharist! This food, and only this food, can satisfy our every spiritual need. We know all too well our basic needs, but how much more should we be aware of our spiritual ones and so grow in our awareness of our complete dependence on Jesus in the Holy Eucharist in order to feed our deepest hunger, which is the hunger for His Love—Man is only happy when He is filled with this Love. As we continue to read this Gospel over the next few weeks, let us first acknowledge our hunger for Love, and for the Food in which any one who believes and eats, will never hunger again…If we turn to this Food which is Jesus, even our earthly needs will be met as well, along with our deeper spiritual ones.