Tuesday after Epiphany

Readings: 1 John 4.7-10; Psalm; Mark 6.34-44

It is possible to teach five thousand people many things and still have lots left over. The 'spiritual works of mercy' even expand in being practised since one who is taught may teach others just as one who is loved may love others, one who is comforted in affliction will learn how to comfort other sin affliction, and so on.

Our attention is drawn however to the more obviously miraculous event of feeding that number of people with bread and fish. But teaching the people - another kind of feeding - is what is mentioned first. The Lord's compassion, on seeing the crowd like sheep without a shepherd (harassed and dejected is how the gospel of Matthew describes them), expresses itself in the first place in teaching.

Aristotle says somewhere that people must eat before they can philosophise and it makes a lot of sense. Hunger will be a great distraction from anything else and that basic human need must be met before any others can be attended to.

But the readings today remind us of what Jesus said to the devil in the moment of his temptations: the human being does not live on bread alone. So what else? Well, love and truth is the answer we hear today. God is love and to know God is to love just as to love is to know God. And this our love is not simply an attempt by us to ingratiate ourselves with God: the good news is that it is God who has first loved us.

What hunger in us is satisfied in hearing these two great statements: 'God is love' and 'this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us'? There is some deep hunger that is satisfied by hearing those statements. Read them again, digest them, make them your own, eat these teachings so that they become part of your being, second nature to you.

And what hunger in us is reassured by hearing that the first expression of the Lord's compassion towards the harassed multitude was to teach them many things, to attend to their desire for knowledge. It is another fundamental desire in us, to be in the light, to be informed and aware, to know what is going on around us, to know what is the case, to know the truth.

Jesus is in the first place a teacher and his miracles, the signs he gave, are all at the service of that teaching. Yes, they satisfy real human needs for food, for health, for freedom, but they are never simply acts of powerful magic, done to impress, to support his teaching in an external kind of way. They are done to serve real human needs and in doing so to lead human beings always further on. They are to lead human beings beyond the physical needs that are satisfied in the wonders he does so that they appreciate the spiritual needs of which they are the manifestation (spiritual blindness, spiritual thirst, spiritual hunger, spiritual freedom).

God's love for us is seen in the fact that he sent his Son as expiation for our sins. In other words to attend to the deepest need of humanity, our need to be free from sin and its consequences. We see those consequences all around us and it can seem as if they are more powerful than anything we might try to use against them. This too needs meditation, digestion, taking to heart: what are our sins? and why do we need a saviour to make expiation for them? Why must God's compassion express itself, finally, on Calvary?