Feast of Corpus Christi – Angele Lewis, SNDdeN
June 22, 2025
Luke 9: 11b -17
Today’s Feast of Corpus Christi or the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ recalls the miracle of Jesus Feeding the Five Thousand.
Jesus reminds, reawakens, and reasserts our need to STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN to Jesus’ urgent call: “You give them something to eat.” — Luke 9:13
In Luke 9:11b-17, we encounter a familiar and astonishing miracle: Jesus feeding the multitude with five loaves and two fish. Yet what lingers most is not the specifics of the miracle, but the movement of divine love woven through it.
Jesus, weary and seeking solitude, sees the crowd and does not turn away. Instead “he welcomed them,” taught them about the Kingdom, and healed their wounds. His compassion overrides his fatigue. He meets their needs with both presence and abundance.
When the disciples urge Jesus to send the crowds away, he replies: “You give them something to eat.” This is not a challenge—it is a commission. Jesus is forming his disciples into a people who mirror God’s love with concrete acts of care.
As Pope Francis reflects in, He Loved Us, love “is not an abstract feeling, but a lived reality that reveals itself in gestures of closeness, tenderness, and mercy.” What Jesus does here is not merely supernatural; it is deeply human and pastoral. He feeds not only with bread, but with attention, touch, and presence—he embodies the very tenderness of God.
The twelve baskets left over suggest more than abundance. They reflect a truth central to the Gospel and to Francis’ encyclical: there is always enough, its God’s love, even when we think we have noting to give. The loaves and fish were not impressive, but offered in faith, they become the means of a miracle.
As disciples today, we are still hearing those words: “You give them something to eat.” It is a call to recognize that God’s love is not just to be received, but extended—through acts of service, compassion, and courage. In a world hungry for hope, healing, and belonging, this Gospel and Pope Francis remind us: God’s love precedes us, carries us, and sends us forth… not to preserve it like a treasure, but to make it visible in the world.” (He Loved Us, ¶31)
Luke 9: 11b -17
Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God, and he healed those who needed to be cured. As the day was drawing to a close, the Twelve approached him and said, “Dismiss the crowd so that they can go to the surrounding villages and farms and find lodging and provisions; for we are in a deserted place here.”
He said to them, “Give them some food yourselves.” They replied, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people.” Now the men there numbered about five thousand. Then he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty.” They did so and made them all sit down.
Then taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing over them, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Meet Sister Angele Lewis, SNDdeN
