Reflection for January 7
Mary Billingsley, The Last Supper Shrine
The first reading today, from the 1st Letter of John, focuses on the core truth of the Incarnation — the one word that reveals the mystery of our God-made flesh: agape, love. John could not put it more plainly: God is Love. Where there is love there is God. In the Christian scriptures, the word agape is often associated with a gathering, a meal, a love feast, and this points us to today's gospel where we are told that Jesus looked out at the vast gathering before him and felt pity for them, lost sheep without a shepherd, hungry pilgrims without a meal.
With the sun setting and their homes far away, the five thousand found themselves in a desert, their souls hungering for truth and their bellies growling for bread. Jesus felt their need and offered to them the words of eternal life and all the bread and fish they could eat. As Mark assures us, they all went home satisfied.
There is a Scottish proverb that explains what we have read and what the five thousand witnessed: "One who bids me to eat wishes me to live." Indeed, Jesus wishes this one thing — life — for those who come out to him in the desert, hungry. "I have come," we read in the Gospel of John, "so that they may have life and have it to the full."
Hunger and thirst, this is what the assembly, the ekklesia, brought to Jesus in the desert and it was enough. Before feeding them with his word and bread, Jesus didn't interrogate the crowd, much less sort them into more or less worthy recipients. If he had, we may be sure that the last would be first and the first, last. Like them, what we bring to the agape feast is our hunger and thirst: "As a doe longs for running streams, so my soul longs for you, my God" (Psalm 42). "Thou have made us for yourself," confesses a thirsting young Augustine, "and our hearts will never rest until they find their rest in you." From Augustine’s Confessions (1.1-5)
Bob Meagher