“There was a famine in the land.”  That’s how the section just before the passage we hear in today’s first reading begins and it’s important for us to know this as we listen to today’s first reading.  At a time when travel was difficult and transcontinental transport was extremely expensive – you couldn’t go to your local ACME to pick up lamb chops from New Zealand or blueberries from Chile, or anything else you wanted for your next meal – everyone was dependent on the local rains to survive.  So, if the rains didn’t come, famine was close behind.  And, throughout the world at that time, nations flourished and disappeared based on the availability of water.  Ancient Babylon, Egypt and even the Mayan Empire rose and fell with the availability of water that provided them with their food.  So, a famine in the land was a warning about a dire situation.  Elisha, the great prophet who succeeded Elijah after he was taken up into heaven in a flaming chariot, demonstrated the power God had given him and his great care and concern for his people in today’s first reading by providing for them in the midst of a famine.  He did so with scarce resources: twenty barley loaves and some stocks of fresh grain.  And, amazingly, you will notice, there was some left over.   

We hear a similar story in today’s gospel.   The people who followed Jesus were hungering for something different.  They were hungering for their Messiah, who they believed would free them from the oppressive Roman Empire.   In today’s Gospel, we hear about a large crowd eagerly following Jesus because of signs he had been performing: turning water into wine at a wedding feast, curing the son of a Roman official and a cripple at the Sheep Gate.  Perhaps, he was the long-awaited Messiah.  And, the crowd that followed Jesus hadn’t planned to spend that much time away from home so they didn’t bring any food with them; all except a boy who had five barley loaves and two fish.  There wasn’t a MacDonald’s or a pizza shop to be found so, like Elisha in today’s first reading, Jesus demonstrates the power of God and his great care and concern for his people by using these scarce resources to feed 5,000.  And, as with Elisha, there was even food left over; that’s how abundant God’s care is for his people.

We have just ended a period of great famine.  So many of you have been deprived of the Eucharist for months on end, not because of a drought or because we went out unprepared but because of a pandemic.  Finally, we are able to return to the Eucharistic Table; what a relief it is for us to be able to be fed in our hunger for the Word of God and the Bread of Life.   And, like the people came to Elisha in today’s first reading and the ones who followed Jesus in today’s Gospel, we here experience the great care and concern God has for us. 

The parallel of this miraculous event – Jesus feeding the 5,000 – with the Eucharist that we are celebrating here today jumps off the pages of today’s Gospel.  It was just before the Passover Feast, just as our gathering here is the new Passover.  And, as Jesus had the people recline on that mountain in Galilee, he invites us to rest for a few moments here from the busyness of our everyday lives and be with him.  Jesus takes the bread, blesses it as he thanks God and shares it, long ago on the mountain near the Sea of Galilee and right here, in just a few minutes.  We receive the spiritual nourishment we all need just as that hungry crowd that had followed Jesus so long ago. 

It’s easy to see how Elisha feeding his people in the midst of a famine and Jesus feeding his followers at the Sea of Galilee both foreshadow the Last Supper, that first Eucharistic celebration.  And, we all know that Jesus offered us his sacred Body and Blood at the Last Supper and then offered himself bodily to God for us on the cross at Golgotha.  Then, after his resurrection, he calls his disciples to proclaim the Gospel of our salvation to all nations.  And we are the privileged descendants in faith who are called in the same way to recall the great love and care God has for us; that’s what’s left over for us.  And, we do this best by living every day as St. Paul teaches us in today’s second reading when he urges us to live in a manner worthy of the call we have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.

As we satisfy our hunger for the Bread of Life, receiving our Lord in his saving Word and in his life-giving Body and Blood, let us now, strengthened and renewed, be the ones who – like Jesus and his first disciples – introduce God’s kingdom in our midst with humility and patience, and strive for unity and peace, the peace that only God can give all who hunger and thirst for it.