He distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted.
The miracles wrought by our Lord
Jesus Christ are truly divine works,
which lead the human mind through
visible things to a
perception of the Godhead.
God is not the kind of being that
can be seen with the eyes, and small
account is taken of the
miracles by which he rules the entire universe and governs
all creation because they recur so
regularly. Scarcely anyone bothers
to consider God’s marvelous, his
amazing artistry in every tiny
seed.
And so certain works are excluded from the ordinary course
of nature, works which God in his
mercy has reserved for himself,
so as to perform them at appropriate times. People who hold
cheap what they see every day are
dumbfounded at the sight of
extraordinary works even though they are no more wonderful
than the others.
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.
Who is even now providing nourishment for the whole world if not the God who
creates a field of wheat from a few seeds? Christ did what God does.
Just as
God multiplies a few seeds into a whole field of wheat, so Christ multiplied
the five loaves in his hands. For there was power in the hands of Christ.
Those
five loaves were like seeds, not because they were cast on the earth but because
they were multiplied by the one who made the earth.
This miracle was presented to our senses in order to stimulate our minds; it
was put before our eyes in order to engage our understanding, and so make us
marvel at the God we do not see because of his works which we do see.
For then,
when we have been raised to the level of faith and purified by faith, we shall
long to behold, though not with our eyes, the invisible God whom we recognize
through what is visible.
This miracle was performed for the multitude to see; it was recorded for us to
hear.
Faith does for us what sight did for them. We behold with the mind what
our eyes cannot see; and we are preferred to them because of us it was said: “Blessed
are those who have not seen and yet believe.”
“When the people saw the sign Jesus had performed they said:
Surely this must be a prophet.”
He was in fact the Lord
of the prophets, the fulfiller of the prophets, the sanctifier
of the prophets; yet he was still a prophet, for Moses had
been told: "I will raise up for them a prophet like yourself."
The
Lord is a prophet, and the Lord is the Word of God, and without
the Word of God no prophet can prophesy. The Word of
God is with the prophets, and the Word of God is a prophet.
People
of former times were deemed worthy to have prophets inspired
and filled by the Word of God; we have been deemed
worthy to have as our prophet the Word of God himself.
(Homilies on the Gospel of John 24, 1.6.7: CCL 36, 244.247-48)
Augustine (354-430)
was born at Thagaste in Africa and received a Christian education,
although he was not baptized until 387. In 391 he was ordained
priest and in 395 he became coadjutor bishop to Valerius
of Hippo, whom he succeeded in 396. Augustine’s theology
was formulated in the course of his struggle with three heresies:
Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. His writings are
voluminous and his influence on subsequent theology immense.
He molded the thought of the Middle Ages down to the thirteenth
century. Yet he was above all a pastor and a great spiritual
writer. |