Feeding the Five Thousand Sacred Art
Feeding the Multitude, miniature by Cristoforo de Predis. 1476 © Alamy / Royal Library, Turin, Italy
Source: Christian Art
Gospel of 8th January 2022 - Mark 6:34-44
As Jesus stepped ashore he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length. By now it was getting very late, and his disciples came up to him and said, 'This is a lonely place and it is getting very late. So send them away, and they can go to the farms and villages round about, to buy themselves something to eat.' He replied, 'Give them something to eat yourselves.' They answered, 'Are we to go and spend two hundred denarii on bread for them to eat?' 'How many loaves have you?' he asked. 'Go and see.' And when they had found out they said, 'Five, and two fish.' Then he ordered them to get all the people together in groups on the green grass, and they sat down on the ground in squares of hundreds and fifties. Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven and said the blessing; then he broke the loaves and handed them to his disciples to distribute among the people. He also shared out the two fish among them all. They all ate as much as they wanted. They collected twelve basketfuls of scraps of bread and pieces of fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.
Reflection on the Illuminated manuscript page
We are so familiar with the story of the feeding of the five thousand that we often skim over the reading too lightly: 'Oh I know this story'. But the eucharistic dimension makes today's Gospel reading a joy to read each time it comes up. Of course the feeding of the five thousand was in itself not a eucharist, but we hear of Jesus taking the bread, blessing it and distributing it. Mark the Evangelist thus puts all of us right there with the five thousand, helping us to rejoice in being fed (although not just like the five thousand with bread and fish), but now we are even more privileged as we are fed with Jesus' sacramental blood and body each time we are at Mass. There is no greater sign of His love for us.
Just as Jesus in our reading today brought love, nourishment and joy to so many people that day, so we are called to do the same in our communities around us: as He fed the people through the agency of His disciples, we are his agents today.
In today's reading everything is on a huge scale: the vast shores where the stage is set, five thousand people attending, twelve baskets left over… there is a true sense of abundance and generosity. And this is not an abundance in the sense of merely counting huge numbers, no, it is more an 'immensity' that is being pictured of what can happen when we follow Christ.
Our illuminated manuscript is from the 1476 Codex de Predis. Two scenes are depicted: Jesus after having performed the miracle with the disciples handing out the food; and, in the second scene, Jesus walks away with a basket of left-over loaves. The artist, Cristoforo de Predis, was born deaf and mute and spent all his life illustrating books. The de Predis family was an illustrious family at the time and it is recorded that they hosted Leonardo da Vinci when he visited Milan for the commission of the Virgin on the Rocks. Leonardo met Cristoforo on that occasion. In his treatise on painting (the Codex Urbinas), Leonardo wrote about how much he had learned from having met a deaf person.
LINKS
Today's story - https://christian.art/en/daily-gospel-reading/1047
Christian Art - www.christian.art
Source: https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/43814
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