NOTES for Mat 15:32-33

The account of the second multiplication of the loaves partly repeats the story of the first feeding, but there are also differences between them. Only the details differ, yet much can be seen precisely through these nuances.

On the first occasion, Christ took pity on the people and Himself healed all who had followed Him; this time the people brought many sick and disabled persons to Him specifically to be healed. He unquestionably helps everyone in need. But more and more often people look upon Christ as a provider of specific help without seeing any other meaning in His coming into the world.

On the first occasion, the disciples raised the question of food for the people; this time He Himself expressed the desire to feed them. It is astonishing that the disciples seem to have forgotten the first feeding and do not understand where bread can be found in the wilderness. Why is this? Is it because they are afraid to ask for a repetition of what amazed them so greatly? Or did what they saw truly pass them by without reaching their awareness? Yet how often do we too, after an important event in our spiritual life, sink back into everyday existence, and the experience that should have transformed us is forgotten...

How little what Isaiah writes resembles what happens in Matthew... The healing of the sick and the multiplication of loaves in the wilderness seem so unlike the prophet's vision. Whichever verse we take, everything is different! And yet what happens in the wilderness, when the blind see, lepers are cleansed, and the Savior feeds all who are in need, is precisely the fulfillment of the prophecies in life. When words labor to express the inexpressible, a person tries somehow to fit them into his own understanding. Later, he finds it difficult to admit that they come to life differently from what he imagined. But this does not prevent God from fulfilling His promises and wiping away the tears from every face.

The many healings the Lord performs become something like an illustration of Isaiah's prophecy: "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute shall sing" (Isa. 35:5-6). We see the fulfillment of what the prophet says; we see Christ overcoming terrible diseases, incurable as we understand them. But the Lord does this not only to show that He came to embody what the prophets spoke of. He heals the sick because He loves each person brought to Him. In His eyes, the life of each of us is precious. We see that the Lord does not merely give; the Lord gives in abundance. He not only accomplishes everything the prophets spoke of, He not only heals the sick, He also makes sure that all these people are fed. He is concerned that the difficult trip back will drain their strength and rob them of the joy of healing. And He is not stopped by the fact that the disciples have only the smallest amount with them. And so, by God's mercy, the whole crowd of four thousand is fed, and quite a lot is left over.

We too cannot offer God very much; sometimes we have almost nothing at all, and each of us is immeasurably small beside the Lord. Then we become ashamed - truly, what can we give You, Lord? But the Lord shows us how our smallness can become a source of food and help for our brothers and sisters. Only this will no longer be our strength or our power; it will be the strength of His love, His mercy, and His Spirit.

Once again the Gospel repeats the account of Jesus distributing bread to the people, and now it speaks clearly about the inner meaning of what is taking place. Between the two accounts of meals, we encounter a person for whom receiving from Jesus even the remnants of this bread means receiving renewed life. She is a pagan woman who asks for life not for herself, but for her dying daughter. Outwardly, her dialogue with Jesus resembles a contest of wit: Jesus sketches a brief parabolic scene (the dogs and the children), and the woman skillfully enters into His imagery, thereby proving her right to the “crumbs of bread.” In reality, however, Christ praises her not for a clever answer, but for her faith, because what happens to her is precisely an act of faith: she recognizes in Jesus the One Who gives the bread of life. In her grief and need, Christ's words about the heavenly bread, which the disciples understood with such difficulty (cf. Jn 6), become entirely clear to her, and she touches the mystery of salvation, the mystery of the bread of life—Christ.

Today's reading again offers us two episodes that, at first glance, seem directly unrelated: the healing of the Samaritan woman's daughter (vv. 22-28) and the miracle of the multiplication of food, similar to the one described in the previous chapter (vv. 29-38; compare Matt 14:13-21). And yet there is a connection between them. That connection runs through the Kingdom, whose manifestation underlies the events described in both episodes. After all, both the miracles and the healings mentioned in the Gospel narratives essentially always speak of one thing: the Kingdom which, in the Savior's words, "has come near."

When we read in the Gospel that this woman was a Canaanite, it does not mean she was "second-rate," or of the wrong origin, or had somehow else failed to please Jesus. We know, having read the Gospel and simply sensing it in our hearts, that Jesus is always ready to help and heal the poor, the sinful, and the rejected. For the evangelist's first listeners it was entirely clear that she was a real pagan: she believed in pagan gods, worshiped them, and offered sacrifices to them. That is exactly why the Lord subjects her faith to such a test - to help her understand why she is turning to Him for help and not to her own gods.

Here a line is drawn between a person's pagan ideas and turning to Jesus, that is, prayer. Prayer to Christ, and to the Father in Christ, is incompatible with paganism. At the same time, paganism does not necessarily mean belief in other gods. It can also be the very ordinary Christian hope not in the one God, but in something else: money, one's own abilities, one's political party, the thought that things will somehow work out, and so on. Paganism is when we live not for God, but for someone or something else, most often simply for ourselves. If we, while being such pagans, want to ask Christ for something and turn to Him in prayer, we will need, together with this Canaanite woman, to pass through a complete revaluation of our faith and understand why we have turned to Christ and not to our idols...