I look forward every year to reading Chapter 6 in the Gospel of St. John. The reason? This Chapter 6 contains an enormously rich teaching on our Lord’s gift of Himself as the “bread of life” (John 6:48).
The chapter begins with a miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish to feed a multitude of people (John 6:9, 10). There are those who, from time to time, interpret this as a lesson in sharing. Our Lord, in this interpretation, invites the crowd to recline and share what is already available to them, a kind of picnic lunch scenario. This, of course, ignores what the Gospel actually says. When our Lord asks Philip, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” (John 6:5), the Evangelist tells us that our Lord “said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do” (John 6:6). He knows exactly what He will do and why. He multiplies the loaves and fish for a reason, to set the stage for what He teaches later in what is called the “Bread of Life Discourse” (John 6:22-59).
This miracle is a foretaste, a preface, for a much deeper teaching about a greater miracle. Our Lord is using a teaching method which finds its origin in the earliest periods of human history — that is, moving from the known to the unknown. St. Paul utilizes this same method with the citizens of Athens at the Areopagus (Acts 17:16-34). Our Lord captures the crowd’s attention by satisfying their human hunger with an earthly food, so that He can then move them to appreciate the bread from heaven (John 6:58). The miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish acts as a catalyst to reveal the Lord Himself as “the living bread that came down from heaven,” a bread which will give eternal life (John 6:51).