Dear Friends,

For the next few weekends, we will be focusing on the all-important sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. This is the chapter that contains the “Bread of Life Discourse” wherein Christ affirms again and again that the bread with which He will feed us - unlike the manna in the desert - really will satisfy our hunger eternally. He shockingly claims that His “flesh is true food” and His “blood is true drink”. 

This Sunday, we hear from the beginning of this chapter, which recounts the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves for the five thousand. However, the point of this story is not so much that everyone was fed; rather, the emphasis is placed on the superabundance of food - twelve wicker baskets were left over after everyone was fed to satisfaction. It is important to note that the graces and life that Christ gives us in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, the Holy Eucharist, is more than we can even handle. There is never an end to God’s love and life - He gives it in abundant measure, not sparingly. May we pray for greater faith to believe that the small physical food that we eat at Mass is actually unimaginably superabundant spiritual food. 

In Christ, 

Fr Marotti