Instruction for the Eighth Sunday After Pentecost

Today, my brothers, we heard read the Gospel of the wondrous feeding of five thousand men, not counting women and children, with five loaves and two fish. Let us retell this account of the miracle in language understood by all. After the Lord heard of the beheading of John the Baptist, He withdrew alone to a deserted place. As we further see, our Lord went to pray in solitude to His heavenly Father, and, by prayer, to ease His own heart, weighed down with sorrow at the violent death of His great Prophet and Forerunner. Ah, brothers, sorrows were not foreign even to the Lord—great sorrows, even unto death, as He Himself said before His sufferings: «My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death» (Mt 26:38; Mk 14:34). So He went into the wilderness, to pour out, in prayer before His heavenly Father, His own sorrow for His friend, John the Baptist. But would the people leave behind this great Wonderworker and most sweet-spoken Teacher? And so the people followed after Him from the cities on foot; a great multitude went after Him.

The Lord sees the crowds of people following after Him, is moved with compassion for them, and, turning, heals their sick. But the people do not fall behind the Lord, and go on, farther and farther from their own villages. Evening has now come. The disciples come to the Savior and say: this is a deserted place, and the hour is already late; send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves bread. «But Jesus said to them: they need not go away; you give them something to eat. And they said to Him: we have here only five loaves and two fish. He told them: bring them here to Me. Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke, and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained. Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children» (Mt 14:13-21). When I read this Gospel, brothers, there came to my mind many, many examples of how the holy servants of God, while living upon the earth, never doubted, even out of their own scant means, to feed the hungry—and how the Lord wondrously multiplied their bread for them.

Here is one example: St. Tychon, afterward Bishop of Amathus and a great champion of Orthodoxy, in his youth sold bread, for his father was a baker. Having a compassionate heart, the pious boy often gave away several loaves to the poor for nothing—for which his angry father, on one occasion, punished him severely. Then St. Tychon said to him: «My father! You are grieved in vain: I am giving your bread as a loan to God, and I have His own promissory note for it in the sacred books, where it is written expressly: he who gives to God shall receive back a hundredfold. If you do not believe this, let us go to the granary: there you will see how God repays His debt to His creditors.» Having said this, he takes his father by the hand and leads him to the granary; and when they opened the door, they found it full of clean, choice wheat, though before there had been almost nothing in it. The father was astonished and struck with awe; he fell to the ground, giving thanks to God, and from that time did not forbid his son to give alms as he wished.

Brothers! Do not doubt, you too, but always give alms: from much, much; from little, less—and be assured that the Lord will bless your house too, and will never allow you to lack anything necessary, and, what is most important of all, for your mercy to the poor He will grant you mercy at His own dread and righteous Judgment: «blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy» (Mt 5:7). Amen.