Monday of Week 18 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 14:13-21
The announcement of John the Baptist’s death is followed immediately in Matthew by the feeding of the 5,000 in the desert. Matthew says that Jesus, on hearing of his cousin’s tragic death, withdrew by boat to a desert place by himself. He clearly wanted time to reflect. He knew that, if things continued as they were, he too would be facing trouble.
However, the crowds knew where he had gone and followed along the shore on foot and:
When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.
His own troubles were set aside as he saw the greater need of the people. We have here, of course, an image of our God, filled with compassion for all of us and anxious to bring us healing and wholeness.
As evening comes down, the disciples suggest that the people be sent to neighbouring villages for food. It is the first mention of the disciples’ presence. In Mark’s version of this story, the disciples had accompanied Jesus in the boat at his invitation, so that they could all have a period of quiet away from the crowds. Jesus’ response is simple and to the point:
They need not go away; you give them something to eat.
They reply:
We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.
This, of course, is a sign of the future. It will be the responsibility of Jesus’ followers to give the people the nourishment they need for their lives. At times, their resources will seem very inadequate, but time will show that wonders can be done with very little. Just look at what St (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta achieved with nothing of her own.
The people are then ordered to sit down on the grass. Jesus takes the loaves and fish, looks up to heaven in the direction of his Father, blesses the food, breaks it and gives it to the disciples, who in turn distribute it among the people. The whole action clearly prefigures the Eucharist and leads up to it.
It is not explained how it all happened, but “five thousand men”, not counting the women and children also present, had their fill. Matthew alone notes the presence of women and children. As Jews did not permit women and children to eat together with men in public, they would have been in a separate place by themselves. And what was left over filled 12 baskets—a perfect number symbolising both abundance, and also the number of the Apostles.
There are two clear lessons. The first is that God takes care of his people. We can read the feeding in two ways. On the one hand, we can simply take it as a miraculous event, pointing to the divine origins of Jesus. On the other hand, there is another possibility with its own meaning. Once the disciples began to share the little food they had with those around, it triggered a similar movement among the crowd, many of whom had actually brought some food with them. When everyone shared, everyone had enough—a picture of the kind of society the Church should stand for. Some might say that this is explaining away the miracle, but it also makes an important point for us to consider in our own lives.
The second lesson is that it was the disciples and not Jesus who distributed the bread and fish. And so it must be in our own time. If the followers of Jesus do not share with others what they have received from him, the work of Jesus and the spreading of the Gospel will not happen.
Lastly, and as already mentioned, there are clear Eucharistic elements in the story—especially the ritualistic way in which Jesus prayed, blessed, broke and distributed the bread. The breaking of the bread (a name for the Mass) is very important because it indicates sharing and not just eating. The Eucharist is the celebration of a sharing community. If sharing of what we have in real life is not taking place, then the Eucharist becomes a ritualistic sham, like:
…whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead… (Matt 23:27)
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Monday of Week 18 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Numbers 11:4-15
We move on today to the Book of Numbers and we will just have four readings from it (Monday through Thursday). Its Hebrew title is “In the Wilderness”, which seems a more appropriate description of its contents. ‘Numbers’ simply refers to the beginning of the book where a census of the people is described.
The book, as a whole, is divided into three main sections:
- Preparing to leave Sinai (1:1—10:10);
- The journey to Kadesh, where a first attempt to enter Canaan was made (10:11—21:13); and
- the journey from Kadesh via Transjordan with the intention of approaching Canaan from the east. (21:14—36:13).
Following the estimation of the book itself, the Israelites spent more than 35 years of their 40 years of ‘wandering’ in Kadesh.
Numbers immediately follows on the book of Leviticus as the fourth book of the Pentateuch, (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). It continues the story of the journey in the desert, but also includes various legal prescriptions which either supplement the Sinaitic code, or prepare for the time when the people will have settled in Canaan.
The first four chapters of Numbers consist of a census of all the tribes of Israel (hence the title of the book). There follow various laws and the offerings of the leaders and consecration of the Levites. Chapter 9 consists of a supplement to Exodus about the Passover. In chapter 11 we come to a section describing halts in the wilderness. Today’s reading comes from this section, and we find the Israelites still grumbling about their lot.
The foreigners among them were so anxious to have meat that the Hebrews also complained that they wanted some too:
If only we had meat to eat!
In fact, meat would not have been part of their regular diet when they were slaves in Egypt. Now that they were in a new type of distress, they romanticised the past and minimised its discomforts. And they do not mention meat as food they had in Egypt, but only fish, vegetables and fruits.
Now, they claim they are starving, with nothing to eat, but manna. Manna seems to have had quite a pleasant taste, but as we also know, too much of anything can become tiresome. It also seems to have been quite nutritious, so the claim about starvation was somewhat exaggerated.
We are given a description of manna and how it was prepared. It was like coriander seed, and in Exodus we are told that it was white (lying on the ground it looked like hoar frost) and it tasted like wafers made with honey. It had the appearance of bdellium, a transparent, amber-coloured gum resin, which is also mentioned in Genesis as being found in the Garden of Eden. Every night (except on the Sabbath) when the dew came, the manna fell also. To eat it, the people ground it into a kind of flour, cooked it in a pot and made it into loaves which tasted like cakes made with oil.
The target and scapegoat of their troubles was, as usual, Moses, whom they blamed for their present situation. God, too, was not very happy with the ingratitude of the people for whom he had done so much.
Poor Moses! He was caught in the middle, receiving flak from both sides. In great distress he spoke to God. He had his own complaints to make:
Why have you treated your servant so badly?
He wants to know why he has to carry the burden of blame when it was God’s own idea to bring the people out of Egypt:
Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a wet nurse carries a nursing child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors’?
Moses felt he could no longer carry the burden alone. Our reading ends with Moses saying he would prefer death than to have to carry on like this.
In fact, God was listening. It is not in today’s reading, but God did hear his prayer and spread Moses’ responsibilities among 70 elders. As for the people’s cry for meat, they would get an abundance of quail every day for a month, until they would get so sick at the very sight of meat that they would never want to see it again! They got what they asked for, but it was turned into a punishment for their grumbling.
How much of our conversation with colleagues and friends consists of grumbling about all kinds of things? How many people do we see made the scapegoats for what we think has gone wrong? How many of the things we think we cannot do without lose their attractiveness once we have got them in abundance? We are not so different from the Israelites.
Let us today once again count our blessings. Most likely, we will see they far outweigh our grievances.
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