What is most important about the meal Jesus arranges for the people listening to Him? One could say the miracle, and that would be true. But what is a miracle? One could also say the manifestation of the Kingdom, and that too would be true. Yet the Kingdom is the breath of God, the power of God, and the love of God acting in a particular way. What way is that? The evangelist explains by mentioning that Jesus blessed the food.

One might think that such an ordinary feature of Jewish life as a blessing hardly needed special mention. Yet the evangelist mentions it, and most likely not by accident. What, after all, was this customary Jewish blessing of food? In essence, it was nothing other than an invitation to God to sanctify the table and join the meal, where He was always awaited as the dearest guest. Jesus apparently does the same: He invites His heavenly Father to join the meal He arranges for the people listening to Him. But God's presence always gives the gathering itself a new quality. God's people are a people-community; that is how God intended them to be. Every sacred gathering, including one in a home, reveals and actualizes this quality, making it a reality wherever and whenever those assembled call upon God to bless their fellowship. The place where those who call upon God gather then becomes sacred space; it is no longer merely the meeting place of the community but the place of God's presence.

And what if the meal is blessed by the One who brought the Kingdom into the world in all its fullness? How great must the fullness of God's presence be in that case? Clearly, we must speak here not simply of sacred space as a place of God's presence and His meeting with the faithful, but of the Kingdom, which is precisely such sacred space in all its possible fullness. There God's presence is revealed as nowhere else, and the meeting becomes not merely an episode but the norm of life, for life in the Kingdom is life in God's presence, without which there is no Kingdom. When Jesus blesses the food, everyone nearby becomes, at least for a time, an inhabitant of the Kingdom.

Of course, such participation in itself guarantees nothing; it can be regarded as a kind of spiritual advance. But that advance can also become the first step on the path to the Kingdom, and therefore on the path to salvation.

"...Peter answered Him and said, Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water. And He said, Come..." How often we are overcome by doubts in our faith. This is a good sign, a sign that our faith is healthy. As Psalm 3 tells us: O Lord, why are those who trouble me multiplied? Many rise up against me; many say to my soul, There is no salvation for him in his God (Ps 3:2-3).

In the spiritual interpretation of this psalm, these many who rise up against my faith are a very real force, even if no one is visibly persecuting me. And when this force attacks, we so want to cry out to the Lord and say: "If this is You, command me to know Your divine nature, making me at least partly like Yourself; share Your divinity with me, make me a participant in Yourself, so that I may be convinced: it is You." For what is Peter's action? In essence, he desired a transcendent, unearthly experience that would strengthen his faith. There are moments when we also want this very much. Our fear becomes so great, our faith is shaken so badly, that we desperately want to seize the Lord's hand.

And how do we handle this? We hear an inner voice: "Who are you, anyway, that such miracles should happen to you? What would be left of your faith then? It would already be certain experience, not faith. Go to church, look at the faith of others, be strengthened by it; and besides," it tells you, "miracles do not happen in our day. Who has seen them, except for some madmen and church people?..." But all this self-reassurance is good, yet not good enough. Because the Lord says something else. He says, "Come." Come. It is very important to hear this. If you doubt, go, be bold, test, seek experience. For true faith comes only after the real experience of meeting God; before that event, it is only a search, only piety, only intention. Our self-reassurance may appear to us to be something supremely correct, very humble, very virtuous. But humility is empty without boldness. We must always remember this.

In some ways today's reading about Peter is close in spirit to the story of Thomas being convinced. Thomas also wanted real experience, and he received it; he received it because the Lord Himself wanted it. His will is that our faith should not be a set of written regulations, not a letter, even one received reverently, not only a rite, not only piety, not only virtue, and not our monologue sent in His direction with some frantic desire that He might at least hear it, like a letter sent to the highest government offices: of course they will not answer, but perhaps there is a small chance they will read it. The Lord does not expect such faith from us. He wants real life together, real cooperation. He wants us to break through boldly toward speaking with Him face to face. If you truly want this, go to meet Him. Go alone, leave everyone else in the boat, and go.

Christ gathers enormous crowds of people and feeds them with bread. There is enough bread for everyone, and each of the apostles even manages to gather a whole basket of leftovers. And this is the same Christ who said that a person lives "not by bread alone" and refused to engage in social reforms!

To understand this event, it is necessary to turn to the biblical parallels for such a mass feeding of people: the manna that God gave Israel in the wilderness. And also to the prophecies that in the triumph of God's Kingdom people will be filled with bread. For the first readers and hearers of the Gospel, the allusion to these sacred texts meant that God's Kingdom was already being realized in Jesus; in Him God had already come to people.

This story was undoubtedly associated for them with their own experience of divine life, into which they entered through the breaking of the bread: thanksgiving, blessing, breaking, distribution of bread, and gathering of leftovers were all actions involved in the celebration of the Eucharistic meal. In that meal, as in this story, the basic human concepts - bread, life, God - are forever connected with the person of Jesus.