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Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

The multiplication of the loaves

Our Lord multiplied bread in the wilderness and changed water into wine at Cana. Thus he accustomed his disciples' mouths to his bread and wine until the time when he would give them his own body and blood. He gave them a taste of transitory bread and wine to stir up in them a desire for his own life-giving body and blood. He gave them generously of those insignificant things that they might know that his more important gift would be free. He gave these things freely, even though they might have bought them, that they might know they would not be asked to pay for something beyond price: for, if they were able to pay the price of some bread and wine, yet they would not be able to pay for his body and blood.

Not only did he freely fill us with his gifts but he treated us yet more lovingly. For he gave us those little things freely to draw us, so that we would come to him and freely receive that great good of the eucharist. Those fragments of bread and wine that he gave were sweet to the mouth, but the gift of his body and blood is of value to the spirit. He attracted us by these tasty foods to draw us to that which gives life to our souls...

The Lord's work achieves all things: in the blink of an eye he multiplied a morsel of bread! What people effect and transform after ten months of labor, his ten fingers carried out in an instant... From a handful of bread a quantity of loaves comes to be: it was for them as it was at the time of the first blessing: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gn 1,28).