Gospel says that big crowd followed Jesus. People came to see Jesus, to tell him their
stories, about their worries, anxieties, hopes and aspirations. Jesus knew what was
going on in their hearts. He was moved by compassion, as we often say, “My heart
goes out to you”; Jesus’ heart goes out to be with the hearts of the people to answer
their cry for healing and satisfy their hunger for better life; compassion is a concern for
the well-being and happiness of others. Jesus is the compassionate one, Son of God
who became bread for us. Jesus satisfies our hunger caused by selfishness,
ignorance, violence and hatred. These are the root sins of humanity that divide our
inner self, homes and society; they leave us in chaos, ruin and we hunger for peace
and harmony.
Satisfaction of hunger is ultimately for happiness. We hunger for material food so that
we might have good health and thereby happiness. We hunger for healing of wounds
inflicted by human violence and hatred so that we can live in peace. Jesus defined
these basic hunger of humans as hunger for God. Jesus satisfies this fundamental
hunger of human hearts by being the living bread in the Eucharist. Because, the
presence of Jesus in our hearts removes selfishness, violence, hatred and makes us
compassionate, people who care and share! A Christian self is a compassionate
self-‘be compassionate just as your heavenly Father who is compassionate’ [Luke
6:36], the sole purpose of Christ’s transforming gospel!
The multiplication of bread signifies a reality beyond the feeding of the hungry, it
prefigured a fellowship/communion in the body and blood of Christ! French scientist
and theologian Fr. Teilhard de Chardin: ‘Eucharist must invade my life. My life must
become, as a result of the sacrament, an unlimited and endless contact with you
Jesus-like a baptism with you in the waters of the world, now reveals itself to me as a
communion with you through the world. It is the sacrament of life-of my life received, of
my life lived, of my life surrendered. Living and dying, I shall never at any moment
cease to move forward in you’. Moving with Jesus means to create in us the
compassionate heart of Jesus and see our world as one that need to be cared and
healed of its wounds. Compassion is not a human instinct, human instinct is primarily
for one’s own survival, to use and destroy others for one’s own goals. But compassion
is divine, it reaches out, gives oneself up for the happiness of others, it creates a sense
of belonging, the kind we saw in today’s gospel-the hungry, tired crowd felt loved and
belonged to each other and Jesus by sharing the food Jesus gave.
Jewish young woman Etty Hillesum who was killed in Auschwitz Nazi concentration
camp, wrote in her diary: ‘At night, as I lay in the camp on my plank bed, surrounded
by women and girls, quietly sobbing, tossing and turning. They tell me, ‘we don’t want
to think, we don’t want to feel, otherwise we are sure to go out of our minds. I was
sometimes filled with an infinite tenderness and prayed, ‘let me be the thinking heart of
these concentration camps’. Jesus became the thinking heart/feeling heart for the tired
crowd that followed him; his love and compassion made them forget about their daily
burdens. Receiving Christ in the Eucharist makes us a thinking/feeling heart like him!
The fragments left over is a sign that there is plenty in the world for the hungry, poor
and afflicted, if we have a thinking heart that is concerned for the well-being of others.
There is a miracle hidden in our compassion and sharing!