Friday of the Second Week of Easter
Throughout salvation history, God frequently provides prefigurements to help us understand what He’s up to. The tale of Abraham and Isaac, for instance, foreshadows God’s offering of His own Son. The lambs sacrificed by the Jews at Passover prefigure the Passion of the Lord and the final defeat of death by the Blood of Jesus, the true Pascal Lamb. In each of these instances, these prefigurements add layers of meaning while helping us to understand the significance of what God is doing for us.
The Gospel narrative today accomplishes a similar task. Superficially, the feeding of the five thousand showcases Jesus concern and provident care for His people. On a deeper level, however, it also prefigures the multiplication of His own Body and Blood in the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Jesus provides physical sustenance for the people by multiplying the loaves and the fish. He likewise provides spiritual sustenance for us today, each and every day, by pouring out Himself.
The prefigurement of the miracle of the fish and loaves helps provide context for us to better understand how it’s possible that Jesus could distribute Himself seemingly endlessly to all peoples of the world at once. Simply put, He assures us that He is capable of doing so because we’ve seen Him do it before. Let us contemplate with great joy the fact that our Creator knows our needs and limits and has orchestrated all things so that we might come to understand and enjoy His incredible, infinite love for us.