The Feeding of the Multitude

We read in the Gospel that when five loaves were brought to the Lord at his bidding, a vast number of God’s people were fed with them. But how this was done is impossible to explain, or to understand, or even to imagine. So great and so far beyond our grasp is the might of God’s power that, though we are perfectly sure of the fact, we are unable to understand how the fact came about. For first one would have to grasp how so few loaves could be enough, I will not say for them to eat and be filled, but even to be divided and set before them, when there were many more thousands of men than there were loaves, and almost more companies than there could be pieces from all the loaves put together. [a]

The plentiful supply, then, was the creation of the Lord’s word. The work grew in the doing. And though what could be seen was only a little, what was given to them became more than could be counted. So there is no room here for guesswork, for human speculation or imagination. The only thing to do in such a case is to acknowledge, like faithful and wise men, that however great and beyond our grasp the things God does may be, even if they lie altogether beyond our understanding, we must recognize that nothing is impossible with God. But as the subject requires, we will speak more fully later on about these unspeakable acts of God’s power, because this one corresponds exactly to the indescribable miracles of his holy birth.