NOTES for Mat 14:13-21

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.

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.

The ancient Persians thought that two equal powers, good and evil, act in the world. Pagans believed that among the various deities some are friendly to human beings and others hostile to them. But in reality there is only one God, and He is merciful. This Revelation is not as simple as it appears. We like to imagine scenes of an apocalyptic confrontation between good and evil; it looks more honorable to us to take part in a grand battle against a corresponding opponent. Therefore we take an allegorical description of the essence for a literal description of events.

Perhaps we have become so accustomed to life in hell that we do not see how monstrous the ordinary is. What small, empty things, in essence, led to the death of the greatest of those born of women, John the Forerunner! Well, this girl danced a provocative dance... Well, her mother wanted to maintain an appearance of respectability so that she would not be reproached for her marriage... The satanic snarl that suddenly appeared surprises us: "Give me John's head on a platter." But we, too, dispose of people's lives in exactly the same way over the most complete trifles. John was the Forerunner of Christ not only because he announced His coming and proclaimed Him. By his death he also foretold how petty envy and momentary political calculation would lead to the death of the Son of God.

When reading today's Gospel word, it is important to keep in mind that in our daily life we are the same Herodias, and our actions, dictated by petty and essentially pitiful interests, lead to catastrophic consequences.

When you prayerfully reflect on the image of John the Baptist, as though focusing your gaze on his icon, you understand that he is some entirely special person. After all, the Gospel contains many remarkable people, kind and sincerely loving the Lord... But in John there is something that seems to separate him from everyone, to set him a little aside. “Among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist...” (Matt. 11:11) — perhaps precisely here lies the reason for this feeling of inaccessibility, of remoteness.

And yet he was only a human being. There is one other human being before whom we have a similar feeling of inaccessibility: Mary. She is simply a woman, and at the same time She is far greater than any woman, for She carried in Her womb the Son of God Himself. This is what unites these two people, apart from blood kinship. But not only this: both became those through whom the birth of Christ was accomplished, in the flesh through Mary, and in the Spirit through John. And both at the same time felt themselves to be humble, unworthy witnesses of the miracle taking place before their eyes.

This is probably why these three icons stand at the center of the Deesis row: Mary, the Savior, and John. And the words of the prayer become somehow especially understandable: “As by natural kinship and by prayerful concord you are one, Mother of the King of all and divine Forerunner, offer together a supplication for the servant who has greatly angered the All-merciful One, that He may show mercy and save, bowing to your intercessions, and change me from my fiery kinship.”