Compassion and Gratitude
Michiel Peeters - Once more, Jesus crossed the Lake of Galilee, and once more, “a large crowd followed him because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick.” Then he goes up the “mountain” on the southwest shore, the hill he loved to climb with his friends because of the beautiful view of the Lake. “There he sat down with his disciples” and began to talk with them, giving all his attention to the conversation. At some point, he lifts his eyes and sees the crowd approaching.
Pondering, half aloud, he says to Philip, who is sitting next to him, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?”
For when Jesus sees the people approaching, he perceives their need. He profoundly sympathizes with man, first of all, those who are touched by him. They follow him, they come to him because, more or less confused, they recognize in him something they desire. They have a need, and they feel he can help them with it. Jesus sees it and is moved because their intuition is true. Then he formulates the question that arises in everyone who is deeply human and, therefore, when seeing a person, perceives their need: Where can I find what could satiate them?
For Jesus, this was not a rhetorical question, a means of shielding himself from reality. Nor was it a question in the sense of a problem to be solved — as we moderns conceive of a question: as a kind of riddle (as Philip also seems to perceive it). This question was the consciousness with which Jesus lived every encounter with his fellow men and women: where to find the food that can satiate them?
The problem is sky-high: not only now with five thousand men but also with one person. Only now is it clearer to everyone.
Every encounter moved Jesus to look out more for that food.
“He himself knew what he was going to do”: to look out for that food.
“Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” Everything else is the consequence of that question, of that awareness.
He makes the people sit down, sit back, and rest, as he did with his disciples last week so that they can come to themselves, see better, and realize what is there.
He accepts the contribution the unnamed “boy” is willing to give, however small.
Then he gives thanks — the great expression of his consciousness. Jesus is already grateful, because you are there, O Mystery, because you make yourself present in the hunger of man who is looking for you, because you begin to satiate him, also through My presence, and through the boy’s small contribution.
We do not know what all Jesus thanked the Father for, but the fact is that he was thankful before the spectacular miracle, that he was aware to receive everything already before the multiplication of the loaves. (As he was grateful before the raising of Lazarus.) Then he distributes to those around him what he has at his disposal, what he had managed to “buy,” what he had received. “As much as they wanted”: in proportion to their want, to the lack they felt, to their hunger, to their need.
When everyone has apparently eaten enough, the Lord’s request to collect all the leftovers to see how much is left expresses his own amazement. The Lord himself is surprised and wants to see what the Mystery has been able to do and has done again! Then he withdraws “again to the mountain alone.” He feels the need to be in silence, alone in front of the Mystery. So full is he of what he has seen!
The author has not revised this text translation. Homily by Fr. Michiel Peeters, Tilburg University - 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time B.
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