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Let the Scriptures Speak
Dennis
Hamm, SJ
The Prophet- King Shepherds His People
The prophet Elisha tells a man with twenty barley loaves to distribute them to a hundred men, and the man goes and does it, with “some left over.” John's point: like Elisha, Jesus is God's agent, but in a way that vastly transcends that prophet of long ago.
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The Word
Embodied
John Kavanaugh,
SJ
The Bread of Life
If Christ really has given us the Eucharist, he is doing something far greater
in our midst than Elisha’s feeding of two hundred with twenty barley loaves or
even Jesus’ own stupendous feeding of five thousand.
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Historical Cultural
Context
John J. Pilch
A Need to Know
The people are fed with bread and fish, John specifies barley loaves. Barley
was the most common grain after wheat. It manages to survive extreme heat as
well as water shortages much better than wheat.
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Thoughts
from the
Early Church
Augustine
Governing the entire universe is a greater miracle than feeding five thousand
people with five loaves of bread, yet no one marvels at it. People marvel at
the feeding of the five thousand not because this miracle is greater, but because
it is out of the ordinary.
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Scripture
In Depth
Reginald H. Fuller
We know that at some stage Jesus broke off his
Galilean ministry and went to Jerusalem, and in all the Gospels the feeding is
a pivotal point in the narrative. This shows that its central position is due
not merely to Mark’s arrangement but goes back to earlier tradition.
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