Can the multiplication of loaves and fishes be scientifically explained? Or is today's Gospel really a miracle? For some modern minds, this passage is an obstacle, one requiring study and interpretation.
Some have tried to altogether sanitize this passage, explaining it as “a miracle of sharing.” German philosophical rationalists Heinrich Paulus and Albert Schweitzer are among those interpreters who advanced the idea that nothing supernatural happened in John 6. Rather than believe that Christ performed an extraordinary feat, these and other demythologizers argue that the crowd that gathered to hear Jesus simply shared their resources.
The first problem with the rationalist account is: that’s not the apparent meaning of the text. The Gospels report no availability of food, such that it would cost 200 days' wages to purchase. The mere five loaves and two fish are miraculously multiplied to provide for the assembly. They weren’t a little short ... there was no food.
But there is a greater problem lurking in the rationalist interpretation. If we begin to remove the supernatural from Christ, at what point do we stop accepting the transcendent altogether? Are we going to begin to reject the miraculous healings? What about the Lord’s conception? The very fact of his rising from the dead?
Christianity is the constant call to embrace the transcendent. Not to be superstitious or naive. Christians shouldn’t shy away from the wonders of the Lord’s life. After all, we believe that there is much more to this life than we see and that it doesn’t end in death…
So what does this miracle teach us? How does the action of today’s Gospel lead our hearts and minds to God?
And so God reveals himself to us in the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish. God is provident and good. God alone fulfills our needs, physical and spiritual. And God chooses to use imperfect ministers as instruments of his labor.
And he gives us more still. As Catholics, we know that there is a greater gift we are given. The Eucharist, the Bread of Life, the food of angels, sustains on our pilgrimage on this side of eternity. We hunger. We desire. We encounter time and again our limitation and finitude.
And yet God deigns to give us, under the guise of mere bread, his very self.
