A sower went out to sow....

For quite a while, our daily Eucharist for Easter focused on a continuous reading of the account of Jesus’ overnight talk with the Jewish leader Nicodemus. An important theme of Jesus’ talk is the need to be born again in water and the Spirit, so that we may enter eternal life. Hence, the attention on the story of Jesus with Nicodemus is meant to show us how our Baptism, the sacrament of regeneration in water and Spirit, is an Easter gift which we must thank to the Risen Jesus for.

Now we shift to the story about Jesus multiplying bread, and Jesus eventually referring himself as the real Bread of life. Through these Gospel readings, we are made aware how the Sacrament of the Eucharist is our special connection with the presence of the Risen Jesus.

We become what we eat, so said St. Augustine. The Eucharist of the Risen Jesus leads us to a way of seeing things:

The Eucharist leads us to transcendence. Philip surveyed the crowd that followed Jesus and he said, “Two hundred day’s wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” Andrew added, “There is a boy here with five barley loaves and two fish; what good are these for so many?” Jesus defied these materialistic and merely physical ways of analyzing the reality.

The Eucharist teachers us to see divine grace in the ordinary. The miracle started with details that are ordinary: a boy, an insignificant boy, barley loaves that were bread of the poor. Grace started our from these, as did Jesus’ earthly ministry which unfolded in a cave for animals in Bethlehem (not Jerusalem).

The Eucharist challenges us to fellowship. Jesus passed on the bread and fish. Many commentators maintain that this action of Jesus could have triggered a chain. Everyone started to pass on what he or she had! For some Bible scholars, this sharing of each to the other was what really multiplied the bread for all. We too, are the bread which are broken and shared that others may have life.