Lest the Christian life be reduced to mere words – spoken or written – Christ equates His spiritual teaching with a physical act of eating. Jesus would have us be refreshed by Him in the same delightful and satisfying way as eating food. When life becomes difficult and presents sad and complex situations, many people turn to food in both normal and excessive ways to experience relief and joy. Jesus created us to experience hunger, to long for being filled, to be unsatisfied and empty on our own. Eating is the experience of becoming one with something that I desperately need in order to live. Jesus’ major teaching is not about something difficult we need to try to understand. He teaches us that believing is like eating – it makes us one with Him and feeds our deepest need and makes us live. This experience of loving and being loved is central to Christianity. Christ’s Words, His presence, His flesh and blood, are meant to be consumed by us. We can then become divine food with Christ for the salvation of the world. The ultimate joy of being consumed out of love is the new commandment.
PSEUDO-JEROME:
The bread of life is most valued not by the idle, or those who live in crowded cities encompassed with the honors of the world. It is rather most cherished by those who seek Christ “in a desert place.”1
ORIGEN:
I believe that he ordered the people to sit down upon the grass because of what is said in Isaiah: “all flesh is grass”; that is, to humble the flesh, to make subject the arrogance of the flesh; so that each one may become a partaker of the loaves to which Jesus gave his blessing.2
ORIGEN:
Since there are different classes of those who need the food which Jesus supplies, for all are not equally nourished by the same words, on this account I think that Mark has written, “And he commanded them that they should all sit down by companies upon the green grass; and they sat down in ranks by hundreds and by fifties.” … For it was necessary that those who were to find comfort in the food of Jesus should either be in the order of the hundred—the sacred number which is consecrated to God because of its completeness; or in the order of the fifty—the number which symbolizes the remission of sins in accordance with the mystery of the Jubilee which took place every fifty years, and of the feast at Pentecost.3
BEDE:
Nor must we overlook the fact that as he was on the point of refreshing the multitude, he gave thanks. He gave thanks in order to teach us always to give thanks for the favors we have received from heaven, and in order to impress upon us how much he himself rejoices at our spiritual refreshment.4
BEDE:
The number one thousand, beyond which no calculation of ours extends, ordinarily indicates the fullness of the things which are being treated. By the number five the well-known senses of our body are represented, namely, sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. The spiritual meaning of the five thousand: Those who act boldly and take courage by living soberly, righteously, and piously, that they may deserve to be renewed by the sweetness of heavenly wisdom, are those implied by the five thousand whom our Lord satisfied by this mystical banquet.5
DIDYMUS THE BLIND:
Just as the person who does not choose what he ought to choose has done wrong and does not love what he ought to love, so those who love only those who are worthy of love receive only that level of praise due to them.6
AUGUSTINE:
To practice righteousness and judgment means to live virtuously, and to live virtuously means to obey God’s law, the purpose of which is to help us to base our lives on the principle of love. This is the love which comes from God, as John says.7
BEDE:
John often praised love, which he said came from God, which is why we read that “he who loves is born of God.” What more need be said? God is love, and therefore to go against love is to go against God.8
CHRYSOSTOM:
What kind of love are we talking about here? It is the true love and not simply what people use this word to mean. It comes from our attitude and knowledge and must proceed from a pure heart. For there is also a love of evil things. Robbers love other robbers, and murderers love each other too, not out of love which comes from a good conscience but from a bad one.9
Footnotes
- HOMILY ON THE SONG OF SONGS 5. Oden, T. C., & Hall, C. A. (Eds.). (1998). Mark (Revised) (p. 84). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
- COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 11.3. Oden, T. C., & Hall, C. A. (Eds.). (1998). Mark (Revised) (p. 85). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
- COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW 11.3. Oden, T. C., & Hall, C. A. (Eds.). (1998). Mark (Revised) (pp. 85–86). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
- EXPOSITION ON THE GOSPEL OF MARK 2.2. Oden, T. C., & Hall, C. A. (Eds.). (1998). Mark (Revised) (p. 86). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
- EXPOSITION ON THE GOSPEL OF MARK 2.2. Oden, T. C., & Hall, C. A. (Eds.). (1998). Mark (Revised) (p. 87). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
- COMMENTARY ON 1 JOHN. Bray, G. (Ed.). (2000). James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude (p. 212). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
- THE CITY OF GOD 17.4. Bray, G. (Ed.). (2000). James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude (p. 212). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
- ON 1 JOHN. Bray, G. (Ed.). (2000). James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude (p. 212). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
- CATENA. Bray, G. (Ed.). (2000). James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude (pp. 212–213). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.