In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Dear Fathers, brothers and sisters:

In today’s Gospel we continue to follow our Lord through the Gospel of Matthew. In terms of the context of today’s Gospel reading we have moved on from chapter nine and the closely packed series of healing miracles and we are now several chapters later in chapter 14. The Evangelist has just related the death of St John the Baptist which had taken place at Herod’s fortress at Machaerus near the Dead Sea. And when our Lord heard about the death of the Forerunner we read that he withdrew ‘into a desert place apart’. However, the large crowds being drawn out into the wilderness created the conditions for our Gospel miracle, perhaps one of the most famous of all the Gospel miracles, the feeding of the 5000. To help us interpret this most famous of all the miracles let us turn to our holy father St Nikolai Velimirovic.

St Nikolai begins his homily through a mediation on the timeliness of our Lord’s miracles. Unlike one of the ancient wonderworkers of thaumaturges He doesn’t do wonders for money or to create a spectacle or whenever someone asks. Our Lord carefully ways whether the miracle will be for the salvation and true benefit of those who entreat Him. As St Nikolai says –

The Lord never refused to perform miracles when they would be appropriate and of service for the salvation of men.

And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.

Our Lord had deliberately withdrawn from the crowds and as He so often did, went to pray and commune by Himself with the Father. Even though He had fled to the wilderness, however, the people were drawn to Him and sought Him out as the only one who could heal them and save them. It would certainly have been understandable if our Lord had expressed some frustration at the sight of yet more crowds of people needing Him, calling to Him and making demands of Him. Yet again, and indeed throughout the whole of His Three-year ministry our Lord was pouring Himself out, sacrificing Himself through His love for His people, His flock. St Nikolai draws attention here to the distinction between our Lord as the Good Shepherd and the hirelings that had been shepherding the people of Israel for so many years.

Down in the cities, the synagogues were full of self-proclaimed shepherds, who were in fact wolves in sheep’s clothing.

And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals (something to eat).

Not only is there a contrast between our Lord, the Good Shepherd and those false shepherds and hirelings of the contemporary Synagogues but also between our Lord and His own disciples. It was not in anyway that the disciples were malicious or even thoughtless, it was just that they were still looking at things in a worldly way, they had forgotten that they were not having to solve this as an entirely secular logistical catering challenge, but they were in the presence of God for Whom all things are possible. Then our Lord addresses His disciples from the fullness of the Kingdom beyond the limited and this-worldly logic of His disciples.

But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat.

Our Lord as the Good Shepherd without hesitation knew that He could feed His lambs even here in the wilderness.

And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.

One can understand of course the disciples confusion and mounting concern especially with the feeble and very slender resources that they had available: just five loaves and two little fishes for a crowd of thousands and thousands of people. How on earth were they going to feed so many and minister to so many people.

He said, Bring them hither to me.

It is here when we come to the end of what is possible from a human perspective that we have to enter a different horizon. As St Nikolai says –

His time had come. The people could not find food for themselves; the apostles confessed their inability to help them. Then, and only then, His time had come, and the situation was ripe for a miracle.

And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven,

There is an interesting detail here that we only see rarely in our Lord’s miracles that our Lord looks up to heaven. Why is this? St Nikoli suggests that this is to make it clear that this food that would be miraculously multiplied as gift from God and to show His union with the Father. Moreover, through drawing such explicitly attention to the Father Heaven, He also sought to oppose the Pharisees’ repeated blasphemous accusation that He performed the miracles through the power of Satan. After looking to heaven, we then hear,

he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.

This blessing and breaking of course reminds us of the Last Supper and the words of Institution at the Eucharist. In his homily, St Nikolai pauses to ask, why did he break the bread?

It means that He, by His own free will, was to give Himself in sacrifice for the salvation of mankind.

Just as at the Eucharist, our Lord here as a type of the Eucharist breaks the bread, as He will later offer His own body to be sacrificed for the salvation of the world. We can also see here in the reference to giving the broken loaves to the disciples another important theological point is being made. Namely that there is a clear hierarchy – flowing from Christ to His disciples, and then from the disciples out to the world. As St Nikoli says the fact that our Lord gives to the people through His disciples points to the fact that –

It was they (the apostles) who were to bear Christ throughout the entire world, and give Him to peoples and nations as living food.

And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.

Without embellishment, elaboration or dramatic emphasis, we then see that our Saviour did indeed manage what seemed on the face of it to be completely impossible. But not only did our Saviour and Good Shepherd feed His sheep, but even more than this, He filled them, he fully sated their hunger and more, there remained still more. Such is the superabundance of God’s love, God’s care, God’s hospitality.

And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.

Although the miracle is known as the feeding of the five thousand, in reality, this would have been the feeding of thousands more when one includes the numbers of women and children which would also have been inevitably in attendance. This statistical point only makes the miracle even more extraordinary and mind blowing.

And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away.

Again without fuss or expressions of amazement, we then see our Saviour shepherding His disciples away. Again St Nikolai asks why does the Lord do this? St Nikolai answers that –

The Lord desired to protect them from pride in the eyes of the people and self-congratulation at being adherents and followers of such a Wonderworker.

Dear Father, brothers and sisters: wherever the Lord is there is Life and there is fullness. Even in the wilderness, even in the desert, our Lord can provide food, and not only just a little bite, a mouthful, but enough to fill us, to satisfy us. So too also today, here in the wilderness, in the middle of the Suffolk countryside we also will come to the Lord’s Table and from the 5 prosphora we will receive the very Bread of Life: the Body of Christ. And in partaking of this heavenly bread we too will behold the Compassion of our God, the Good Sheperd Who continues to feed His sheep through the unworthy hands of His priests. Unlike the Israelites in the wilderness, let us not grumble, but come with thanksgiving for the Shepherd Who feeds His Sheep with His own Most-Precious Body and His own Most-Sacred Blood.

Amen.