2 Kings 4:42-44
The First Reading depicts a food miracle by the prophet Elisha that properly is understood as a precursor to Jesus’ miraculous multiplication of the loaves as we hear in the Gospel. The works that God begins in the Old Testament through the service of the prophets are all completed perfectly by Jesus Christ, the icon of the heavenly Father and incarnate Word of God.
John 6:1-15
In the Gospel Reading, the large crowd following Jesus needs to be fed and Jesus sets about the task in a miraculous. Manna does not fall from heaven. Instead God uses the meager resources humanity and then has the remnants of immense generosity gathered up rather than letting them go waste. We witness the superabundance of divine grace! God reveals Himself to be magnificently extravagant in the order of our redemption.
