All four Gospels record that thousands of men, not including women and children, were fed after Jesus took bread, broke it, and distributed it to the people. The blessing and breaking of bread will occur again at the Last Supper when Jesus institutes the Eucharist. Jesus is seeking to do more than feed a large crowd for one afternoon. Pope Benedict XVI, in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, describes it this way: “The Eucharistic mystery thus gives rise to a service of charity toward neighbor, which consist in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. . . Keeping in mind the multiplication of the loaves and fish, we need to realize that Christ continues today to exhort his disciples to become personally engaged: ‘You yourselves, give them something to eat.’ Each of us is truly called, together with Jesus, to be bread broken for the life of the world.” As a Eucharistic people are we “personally engaged” with others?
