Sunday Ordinary 17B 2024 | 2 Kgs 4:42-44/Eph 4:1-6/Jn 6:1-15
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.
When Jesus sees the crowd coming toward him, he recognizes their need. He sees that they are physically hungry. Jesus, too, feels this physical hunger. He is poor and shares in their bodily weakness and needs. He knows that that he is the only one who can satisfy them with the bread that they need, but he does not want to do it alone. He wants to give his disciples a share in what he is about to do. So he turns to Philip and asks him what he suggests that they do.
Jesus wants an answer from Philip that arises from out of the depth of his own experience; first, of physical hunger. Jesus has called Philip from the beginning to follow him as part of the group of his most intimate disciples. He has been set apart from the crowd as a believing disciple, but not as one who has been separated from their needs. He is to have a sense of solidarity with the crowd, just as Jesus himself does, who has come into this world from the Father precisely to take upon himself the whole of our humanity, in the full range and variety of human experience, not separating himself from anything, ultimately, going all the way to god-forsakenness. Here, the disciple is called by the Lord to be moved to love of neighbor through a share in the simple common everyday human experience of physical hunger.
Our monastic way of life is built on this principle, that being called apart by the Lord and consecrated to his service we will be conformed to Christ in his poverty and simplicity, that we will become poor with the poor Christ, and as we are conformed to him we will be drawn more closely to the human family and its experience than we would be otherwise. Here it is matter of sharing a fundamental experience with Christ and the crowd. The disciple must possess both solidarity with the people on the level of a common human need and unity with the Lord in poverty, self-surrender and self-emptying love.
Jesus wants to form Philip in this mode of service and so he prepares to lead him through each step of the miracle through which he wants to open the crowd to faith and love.
“Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” Philip gives Jesus an estimate: two hundred denarii would not be enough. A number that falls short of the mark, but in any case, represents an enormous sum that lies well beyond their means. By his calculation it cannot be done, it is impossible.
Philip has not closed himself off to the possibility of what Jesus is about to do, but he doesn’t consider it either.
Nevertheless, Philip leaves himself open to what the Lord is about to do, awaits his instructions and will carry out what he is asked to do without grumbling or stubborn resistance. He in no way obstructs the Lord’s action but enters into it from within his own limited horizon of the range of human possibility. Philip does not have a grasp of the overall plan, but he knows that the Lord does. His task is to be ready to respond to Jesus and be led in whatever direction he leads him. In that way he will be able to participate in the Lord’s answer even without being able to imagine the outcome himself. So we, too, must be ready to be led by the Lord step by step along the path of the spiritual life despite our limited understanding and blindness. By responding to the Lord’s question in the best way he can he already shows he possesses the readiness that the Lord needs from him.His response is already a ‘yes’ to all that is to follow. A ‘yes’ within a limited faith but one that leaves the Lord room to work.
By asking the question Jesus shows that he takes Philip seriously as a free partner. He doesn’t just order him to do such and such but truly elicits his cooperation. Philip and Jesus can go forward now together. Although Philip does not have access to the Lord’s comprehensive plan his yes strengthens and enriches their relationship and binds them together in a deeper unity as they move through the steps of the miracle. Philip is ready, open and expectant for all that is to follow.
His own physical hunger has played no small role. He is hungry and he wants to be satisfied. His physical hunger is preparing him for the satisfaction of his spiritual hunger in the manifestation of the Lord’s glory which about to be revealed. At the same time, love for his neighbor has been aroused as he stands at the Lord’s side and contemplates the need he sees before him and how to address it.
If we see Jesus simply as a man, the demands placed on him by the crowd are utterly excessive, even crushing. There is no way to meet them. No matter how much he might have dedicated himself to them, he would quickly be overwhelmed.
Andrew brings the boy with the five loaves and the two fish to Jesus’ attention. Indirectly, both Philip and he highlight the infinite gulf that exists between the demands of the world and the possibility of meeting those demands by Jesus seen as a man. Jesus will use the bread and fish that in themselves signify human impossibility to reveal the fullness of divine possibility.
Jesus asks the disciples to have the crowd recline. He creates an atmosphere of expectation within the crowd. Yet what follows contains nothing sensational about it, it is not even visible. The miracle itself is only perceived when it has been completed, once everyone has received their fill and the amount gathered is shown to exceed the amount that was originally distributed.
Whereas Philip’s response was based on a sort of economics of human possibility, on the availability of money and materials, Jesus’ response introduces a new supernatural order which moves according to the economics of grace. Philip’s response evokes a world of measure, limit, sufficiency and insufficiency, all that can be quantified, delineated and determined. Jesus’ economics of grace on the other hand, comes from the world he knows with his Father: a reality without measure or limit, characterized by excess, overflow and surplus, the world of the endless exchange of their mutual love.
When the bread passes through his hands in blessing and thanksgiving, it passes from something finite to becoming something that can be passed on infinitely and is always accompanied by surplus. However many people there might have been present on that mountain, the bread would have always been multiplied in such a way that each one would have been satisfied and, in the end, there would be discovered that there was a surplus. Every grace that the Lord bestows is given without measure and ends in surplus.
So it is in every Eucharist, the grace that we received is given to each as we have need, in a way that satisfies our wholly personal hunger. In fact, the grace of the Eucharist overflows our need, increasing our desire and leading us forward to ever greater grace as we move in love ever closer to the ever greater God.
Finally, this miracle does not concern simply an individual person but a crowd. The profoundly personal gift that is received by each takes place only within the crowd and forms what is simply a transient crowd gathered for a moment into a people united in a profession of faith: “This is truly the prophet who is to come into the world.” Here we have a beginning of the fellowship of the Church, in which each member is touched personally within the uncountable numbers that constitute her body and yet only has life within that body. Let us open ourselves to this economy of grace as we continue our celebration of this Eucharist.
