The Feeding of the Five Thousand

The Passover is near. A great crowd follows Jesus to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, drawn by his miracles. Jesus goes up on the mountain with his disciples. Seeing the crowd coming, he asks Philip, to test him, “Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” Philip does the math: two hundred pennyworth of bread would not be enough. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, points out a lad who has five barley loaves and two small fishes, “but what are they among so many?” Jesus has the crowd sit down on the grass: about five thousand men. He takes the loaves, gives thanks, and distributes them, then the fishes, as much as they want. All are filled. “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost”: twelve baskets are filled! The crowd wants to make him king, but Jesus withdraws alone to the mountain. Shortly afterward, at Capernaum, he will declare, “I am the bread of life.”