The reading is the traditional narrative of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, as given in the Johannine gospel. The narrative has obvious Eucharistic symbolic weight, but the evangelist wanted to connect it with the symbolic weight of the Exodus as well, noting, “Now it was near the Passover, the feast of the Jews.” Jesus’ disciples point out how difficult feeding the crowd would be. Jesus’ response in the Johannine version hints at the imagery of shepherds leading sheep to pasture: “Now there was much grass in the place.” When the crowd had eaten, it wanted to establish a kingdom; so Jesus “withdrew again to the mountain….”
…Withdrew to the mountain: Moses did that too. When the crowd set up a golden calf, he broke up the terms of the Covenant written in stone, destroyed the golden idol, and withdrew to the mountain. And what is the new idol, the new gold calf re-incarnate that sent Jesus back up the mountain? The crowd wanted to seize him and make a kingdom.
It was not too far back in history that the Catholic Church was a kingdom, with the pope a monarch over Papal States. Norms about marriage, for example, were a matter of legal decree. Providence has changed matters; the idol has been destroyed and replaced by conscience.
That leaves us with the responsibility of cultivating a well-formed conscience rather than relying on laws. No longer are virtues to be denatured by replacing them with acts of legal observance. It seems that also in antiquity, Jesus wanted faith, hope, and charity to increase rather than to himself compel conformance.
This is a greater civilizational challenge than may first appear. Training for obedience, analogous to military regimen, is simply not up to that challenge. The cultivation of conscience requires a clear-headed and questioning populous, an unsilent majority whose strength lies in being unmanageable. Moreover, organized civilization, always spiritually agitated, needs make itself more so.
© 2015 Anthony J. Blasi
