Seeing with the Eyes of Faith
Saturday, February 15th Readings Reflection: Saturday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel recounts the miracle by which Jesus fed over four thousand people by multiplying seven loaves of bread and a few fish. In a course studying the four Gospels that I recently took, I learned that a modern approach to this Gospel passage tries to find a natural explanation for the miracle. Some modern scholars claim that Jesus did not actually miraculously multiply the loaves and fish but instead persuaded the people to share the food that they had. According to this claim, various people in the crowd had food; Jesus purportedly persuaded those who had food to share with those who had none, so that all might be fed. This false explanation seeks to explain away the miracle by naturalistic means. Rather than seeing this passage as a manifestation of Christ’s divinity and omnipotence, this modern interpretation instead views it as an example of charity.
The Fathers of the Church unanimously saw in this Gospel passage a manifestation of Christ’s divinity and power. Jesus Himself said in today’s Gospel reading that the people had nothing to eat (see Mk 8:1). Where there was nothing, Christ filled their needs by His grace, demonstrating that He alone satisfies all of man’s needs through the Church. St. Bede the Venerable pointed out that Jesus gave the miraculously multiplied loaves and fish to His Apostles to distribute, signifying “that He assigns the spiritual gifts of knowledge to the Apostles, and that it was His will that by their ministry the food of life [that is, the Eucharist] should be distributed to the Church” (Catena Aurea).
The miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fish foreshadows the Eucharist, in which the entire substances of bread and wine become Christ’s Body and Blood. While the loaves and fish satisfied the crowd’s physical hunger, the Eucharist satisfies our spiritual hunger, filling our souls with God’s grace and uniting us with the Blessed Trinity in a supremely intimate way.
Later in this same chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel, Our Lord rebuked St. Peter for “[savoring] not the things that are of God, but that are of men” (Mk 8:33 DRB). Perhaps this same rebuke can also serve as a reminder to us in our own faith. If we try to find naturalistic explanations for Christ’s miracles, we will necessarily diminish His divinity and authority, Whom “both wind and sea obey” (Mk 4:40). Likewise, we must also avoid an understanding of the Eucharist that remains on the surface, failing to see beyond what our senses can detect. As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Pange Lingua, faith must supply for the defect of the senses; we must recognize with faith the divine reality that is hidden from our senses.
While a naturalistic explanation may seem the most plausible upon a first glance, faith calls us to look deeper and recognize the power of Christ’s divinity at work. This is true for the miracles in the Gospels, the Holy Eucharist, and even the workings of Divine Providence in our own lives. May we always strive to see with the eyes of faith, looking beyond a merely naturalistic understanding to recognize God’s presence when He reveals Himself to us.
