Loaves and fishes in all 4 gospels

Mt 14:13-21; Mk 6: 30-44; Lk: 9:10-17; Jn 6: 1-14

The miracle of the loaves and fishes was frequently recounted in the Eucharistic liturgy of the early church. That explains why it came to be recorded in all four gospels. It doesn’t happen often that one and the same event is found in all four. One can detect a kind of liturgical cadence in the gospel account of loaves and fishes. The words of the gospel sound so much like the words of the priest at consecration: “He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples.”

On this Sunday of the five loaves and two fishes, let’s get it settled right from the very beginning: what in the world is the plural of fish? Is it fishes or fish? Just this past week a TV announcer answered the question for us. He said when you have a number of fish of the same species, e.g., ten perch, you say “ten fish.” But when you’ve caught a number of different species, e.g., perch, walleye and catfish, then you refer to them as fishes. That’s trivia at its best. So that’ll put an end to any criticism that I don’t know that the plural of fish is fish.

Loaves and fishes in Milwaukee

St. Benedict the Moor Church on Ninth and State has a daily community meal for anyone hungry, no questions asked. Originally the meal was the inspiration of a young man from Ireland, Mike Cullen, and his wife, Nettie. Years before, they had opened their modest home on the south side of Milwaukee to anyone hungry. They named their house Casa Maria (House of Mary), and over its door they hung the words of Isaiah of the first reading, “Come, you who have no money. Come, receive grain and eat” (Is 55:1-3). What an incredible invitation in a capitalist society--Come, you who have no money!

Their free meal in the course of time came to be called Operation Loaves and Fishes. So many people came that their little meal soon outgrew the couple’s modest home, and the meal had to go in search of a larger banquet hall. After a few short stops, first at Highland Methodist Church and then at St. Michael’s Catholic Church, the meal finally came to rest at St. Benedict’s. There it opened for the first time on Friday, November 13^th 1970. It was, indeed, a lucky day. Through 35 long years Operation Loaves and Fishes has broken bread with four or five hundred people, not just on Thanksgiving or Christmas but daily. (Most people get hungry more than twice a year.)

The daily meal is a very personal gift of ordinary people just like you and me, from all parts of the city and beyond, and also from all different denominations. Once a month, when it is your turn, you personally prepare one of the dishes in your home, you pack it up, bring it down with your kids and you personally help in dividing, or rather in multiplying, the loaves and fishes. Benedict Community Meal always tries to foster a family spirit in which the feeders themselves (those kind people from all over) are in some mysterious way fed, and those who are fed (those people “who have no money”) are in some mysterious way feeders. In Operation Loaves and Fishes, all are fed and all are feeders; so that bread does not feed separation but communion. Some of us sometimes wish that Catholic Communion were just as powerful.

There at St. Ben’s, in the breaking of bread with anyone hungry you learn not to ask any questions, even though you’re tempted to. And you’re challenged not to judge, even though you’d like to. Sometimes you find yourself quietly exclaiming, “There but for the grace of God go I.” At times Operation Loaves and Fishes speaks powerfully to you and your kids without any words at all about the horrors of drugs or alcohol or just plain loneliness. It speaks simply about the unfairness of that Great Sower, Birth, who randomly casts us as seed on either the right or wrong side of the tracks. Imperceptibly the meal sets you and your kids counting your blessings, even though you don’t have a Porsche or a BMW. But many times it also has you saying, with Jesus, what you never really believed at all before, “Blessed are the poor, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”

An artistic tapestry

At St. Ben’s, we would periodically celebrate Operation Loaves and Fishes with a Eucharistic liturgy. After all, the meal is a kind of miraculous multiplication of five loaves and two fishes on the part of many different families from all over the city, each giving just a little and yet feeding so many. On those liturgical occasions, we would borrow a piece of tapestry from the art museum of Alverno College. Its theme is the gospel loaves and fishes. The piece was executed by the famous, but now deceased, Milwaukee artist, Sr. Helena Steffensmeier of the School Sisters of St. Francis. Her works fill the museum at Alverno College and at the Motherhouse on South 27^th Street. We borrowed her tapestry so often that the college finally bequeathed it to us.

It has the basic form of a banner, narrow and long. On the very top are the five loaves and two fishes. At first I thought they were rather small in comparison with the rest of the tapestry which seems at first to be squandered on a monotonous line-up of 12 large baskets arranged in four rows of three, and all of them overflowing with leftovers. As tapestry, it’s quite an artistic piece, especially because of the choice of cloth materials which have all different textures and weaves to them, giving you a visual feel of the baskets.

The banner is filled not only with art but also with message. That monotonous line-up of 12 large baskets arranged in three rows of four, all of them overflowing with leftovers screams out, “Abundance!” In a generous world that’s willing to divide and share, there’s enough for everyone. In a greedy world there’s not enough for anyone. The banner screams out,”Leftovers! Don’t throw them away! There’s a world out there that’s starving. Gather them up into baskets!” The banner also screams out, “Take heart! See how much you can do with so little—five loaves and two fishes! “

Compassion: the hidden stitch

But there's a hidden stitch in Sister Helena’s piece. It’s a spiritual and invisible element, which that very spiritual woman would have visibly woven it into her tapestry if that were possible. That hidden stitch is compassion. The gospel says, "The heart of Jesus was moved with compassion for the hungry crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd" (Mt 14:14; Mk 6:34).

It wasn’t money that fed the five thousand; it was compassion. When Jesus tells the disciples that it is not necessary to send the people into the villages to buy food but that they themselves should feed the hungry crowd, they cry out, “With what! We’ve only got five loaves and two fishes” (Mt. 14:16-16). One translation of the story as recorded in Mark has the disciples crying out, “With what! We don’t have enough money to buy even a mouth full for everyone” Another translation reads, “With what! It will take a fortune to feed all these people” (Mk 6:37). It wasn’t money that fed the five thousand; it was compassion. It begot the miracle that multiplied the loaves and fishes.

It’s the same in politics. At the end of the day, it isn’t money that is going to work the miracle of insuring 45 million hard working uninsured American citizens. There is never enough money for that. At the end of the day, it is only compassion that can find the money that can work the miracle of insuring the uninsured.

Compassion: a perfectly respectable word

For some time now, compassion has become a politically incorrect word. It conjures up all the horrors of the welfare system which often does for others what they should be challenged to do for themselves. I watched that system at work just this past week. The house beside ours is a HUD house. HUD stands for Housing and Urban Development. The house beside ours is public housing. The HUD people were there this past week for three days with vans filled with tools to replace smashed doors and broken windows, and to repair this and that. Over the past twenty years I have seen HUD rebuild that place at least six times. And that’s just one of HUD’s thousands of houses throughout the city. No wonder compassion has such a bad name. No wonder politicians are deathly afraid to use the word.

There are exceptions, however. Mario Cuomo (former governor of New York State) wasn’t afraid to use the word in that famous address to the Democratic Convention in 1984, in San Francisco--that city named after St. Francis of Assisi. He said, “We would rather have laws written by the patron saint of this city, St. Francis, than laws written by Darwin,” who taught survival of the fittest. Then Cuomo went on to say, “We want government which is not ashamed but is courageous enough to use the word love and compassion.”

In its root meaning compassion is a perfectly respectable word. It comes from the Latin cum (with) and patior” (to suffer). Compassion is suffering with the sufferings of others. The first victim of the Nazi terrorists was not the six million innocent Jews who died in gas chambers and were incinerated in crematoria. The first victim was compassion: the ability of Nazis to feel the sufferings of Jews. With compassion murdered, the Holocaust came easily. The first victim of Islamic terrorists was not the three thousand innocent people whose lives were snuffed out at ground zero in lower Manhattan. The first victim was compassion: the ability of Islamists to feel the sufferings of us “Infidels.” With compassion murdered, 9/11 came easily.

Compassion: Christ’s word

Compassion is also a perfectly Christian word. Christ used it all the time. To the Pharisees who fault him for eating with sinners, he cries out, “Oh, if you only knew meaning of the scripture that says, `It is compassion I want from you people, and not your animal sacrifices'" (Mt 9:13; Hosea 6:6). When the religious leaders fault him and his hungry disciples for picking grain on the Sabbath, again he quotes the prophet Hosea, “It is compassion I want from you people, and not your animal sacrifices" (Mt 9:13; Hosea 6:6).

When the teacher of the Law asks him, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus crafts that mother of all parables: The Good Samaritan. Once upon a time, a man going from Jerusalem to Jericho was waylaid by robbers and left half-dead. Along came both a Jewish priest who rushed right by the poor man and a Levite who also rushed by. Then came a Samaritan. He, too, was in a hurry, but seeing the dying man and feeling his sufferings he slammed on the breaks of his busyness, came to a screeching halt and poured the oil of compassion into the poor man's wounds. Then he hoisted the dead weight of the victim onto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn. There he dug deep into his pocket to pay for the man’s care and cure and promised the innkeeper that on his return home he’d pay whatever more he owes (Lk 10: 25-37).

Well, after a few days the Samaritan returning to Jerusalem kept his word and stopped at the inn to see what he owed. The victim, marvelously recovering, seeing the Good Samaritan hugged and kissed him and told him he was an angel. And the Samaritan could feel shivers going up and down his back.

Jerry Quinn

The compassion of Jesus that fed the five thousand and the compassion of the Good Samaritan that made him slam on the breaks of his busyness lives on in Jerry Quinn. Quinn, 52 years old, is a busy man who owns a bar and restaurant in Boston. In the morning newspaper one day he read about the plight of Franklin Piedra. He is Ecuadorian, 33 years old, suffering from chronic kidney failure. His mother wants to give him one of her kidneys. The transplant would cost at least 100,000 dollars, and she has no health insurance. The Ecuadorian Consulate suggests that he go home and die. Jerry Quinn has a better idea. “I’m not a very wealthy guy,” he said. “I’m comfortably off, but I got this thing in my life—you can use only one car, you can use only one kitchen, you can use only bathroom, you can only eat so much. That’s my theory of life. So what more do we need?”

Quinn was saving his money for a major down-payment on a two-bedroom apartment in a suburban part of Boston with a river view and all. But now another thought keeps popping up, and he can’t get rid of it. He calls the reporter at the New York Post who wrote the story. He says he wants to help. She asks, “How much do you want to donate—a hundred bucks? A thousand bucks?” He replies, “I’d like to do the whole thing! The whole 100,000 dollars!” Piedra and Quinn finally met. Said Quinn, “He hugged me and kissed me and told me I was an angel. As I thanked him I could feel the shivers going up and down my back.”

The article doesn’t say a word about Quinn being a good Catholic, as good Irishmen are known to be. He might be a “roaming Catholic” as many are these days. He might even be some kind of a rounder. I don’t know. But no doubt about it, hands down, he is, indeed, a Good Samaritan, and is utterly ready for the liturgical breaking of bread.

Franciscan priest, Fr. Leonardo Boff, says we have a cultural crisis on our hands. It is “the terrifying lack of compassion” that has settled in upon us and our kids. Compassion has become an endangered species. The entertainment industry which feeds on violence kills compassion in us and our kids. We don’t need to be space scientists to figure that one out. The “me, me, me” chant of our culture kills compassion in us and our kids. It drowns out the cry of others who are suffering. Hi-tech gadgetry kills compassion in us and our kids. We don’t learn compassion by staring at hi-tech toys the first twenty years of our lives. We don’t learn compassion being locked up in a little virtual world all our own. We do learn it, however, in a real operation like Loaves and Fishes.

Conclusion

The visible face of compassion

Perhaps the greatest cause of this terrifying lack of compassion that has settled in upon us all is the high speed of life. Most of us are decent people, but we are very busy people. We don’t have time for compassion. The only ones among us who do have time are those who have decided to slam on the breaks of their busyness and make time to pour the oil of compassion.

At the end of the day, our busyness only exhausts us, but compassion energizes us, especially when we are hugged, kissed and told what angels we are, and feel a chill running up and down our spines. While compassion is the invisible stitch in Sr. Helena’s tapestry, it has a way of writing itself visibly all over the faces of people like the Good Samaritan and Jerry Quinn.