“Imagining the Gospel Scene” is a series from the Jesuit Media Lab. On occasional Sundays throughout this liturgical year, creators in the JML community will respond to the day’s Gospel passage through the practice of Ignatian contemplation, or what is sometimes called “imaginative prayer.”
In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola invites participants to place ourselves in Gospel scenes using the imagination, relying on our senses to develop a distinctive, personal perspective on a given story — and thereby getting to know Christ better. After praying with the Gospel using their imaginations, our contributors will create a piece of art flowing from their experience — a painting, poem, short story, song, photograph or work in another medium.
Today’s installment is by John Dougherty.
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 4, 2024
John 6:24-35
The world had changed, but the next morning I woke up and my joints still ached, the roof still leaked, and my children still needed to be fed. Everything was different, and everything was the same.
Yesterday we went to see the Teacher preach in the countryside. There were so many people, enough to fill our village five times over, and so little food as the day wore on. But then the Teacher took a tiny offering of bread and fish, blessed it, and shared it with the crowd. And somehow, it was enough. My children went to bed with full stomachs, a miracle all on its own.
In the morning, I took stock of our bread. I am an ordinary woman, and I can perform no miracles. My bread is the result of hours on my knees over the hand-mill, grinding barley into flour with a stone. I mix it with water and bake it, yielding a few measly loaves that we parcel out across the week. They are flavorless and tough — I dry them in the sun so that they won’t sprout mold — and the hand-mill leaves traces of grit that rasp across your tongue and wear down your teeth. The following week, I do it all over again.
Caleb had just returned from the sea, smelling of fish guts. He brought two small musht from the night’s catch, and I cooked them as he sat drying himself by the fire, shoulders slumped. He doesn’t speak much, my Caleb, but I know his mind. He had also witnessed the Teacher’s miracle. And now here he was with the same aching back and the same blistered hands, wondering how the children would get through the day on so little.
Soon they were up, the four of them. Bec took a tentative bite of my bread, and then asked if we could go see the Teacher again. I smiled: “Perhaps if he passes this way again, little lamb.”
As Caleb prepared to return to the shore, there was a knock at the door. “Caleb! Are you there?”
I winced. My brother, Asher. Just his voice makes every one of my muscles tighten in annoyance. Maybe you think that’s unfair. Well, he’s not your brother.
Asher entered with a flurry of kisses and greetings, picking up the smaller children and twirling them around; acting, in other words, like a clown. This is not uncommon. Behind him, more timid, came his wife, Joanna. Asher enters a room as if there’s no doubt that everyone there loves him; Joanna enters a room as if she thinks she’ll be asked to leave.
Specifically, that I’ll ask her to leave. She’d gotten the brunt of my frustration more than once. Asher married her because she was young and pretty, not because she had any skill at being a wife. She would get caught up in some daydream and burn the bread or spend the morning chattering with other women at the well when she had chores to do. Then, when it became too much, she would weep. Her mother had died, so I was the one who had to help her each time. Ever since they married, I felt like I had another child to care for.
“The Teacher is in Capernaum,” Asher said.
The children immediately became excited, and I sent them outside to play or begin their chores.
“Good,” I said. “Capernaum needs salvation.”
“Caleb, you could take us to him,” Asher said. “When you bring the fish to market.”
“And what about your work?” I asked. “You can’t spend all day listening to parables.”
Asher ignored me. “Caleb … we could ask him for more bread.”
A foolish, traitorous hope fluttered in my belly. Secretly, I had thought the same thing when I looked at our small supply this morning. The Teacher could take one of those sad loaves and, with a prayer, turn it into food that might last us weeks. Weeks without the hand-mill, weeks of my children with full bellies.
But if Asher had the same idea, it was a bad one. “Who are you to ask the Teacher for more? He could have created a mountain of bread for our village if he wanted to, but he didn’t.”
“Perhaps he would have,” Asher said, “but he left so quickly…”
“Because you and those other fools were trying to coronate him.”
Asher threw up his hands in exasperation. “At least I know a miracle when I see one, Esther! The Messiah has come. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I heard you all celebrating late into the night,” I said. “Did you expect to wake up and find Rome fallen and the Messiah enthroned in Jerusalem? Did you leave any food for today, or did you throw a feast with no care for tomorrow?”
Asher looked away.
“He’s one of us,” Joanna said.
Her voice was so small that, in its own way, it commanded silence. We all looked at her, and she looked down, embarrassed.
“He was a carpenter in Nazareth,” she said. “He lives in the fields. He knows what it’s like to be hungry. He’ll … he’ll understand.”
Again, that treacherous stirring of hope. I looked at Caleb, saw his silent assent.
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m coming, if only to prevent you from making an even greater fool of yourself.”
Asher started to argue, but I raised a hand. “And if we return empty handed, brother, that’s your responsibility. Don’t come begging at dinner time.”
“Tonight we feast on manna from Heaven!” Asher declared, and Joanna giggled.
I scoffed, but in truth I looked forward to seeing the Teacher again. I remembered the bread, smoother and sweeter than any barley loaf I’d tasted.
What might he offer us this time?
***
Our eldest, Jonah, and the other men of Caleb’s fishing crew were on the shore tending to their nets and preparing the catch for travel. A few remained to help Caleb bring it to Capernaum to be salted and sold, while others headed home to rest before returning to the sea in the evening. Jonah was puzzled when I told him that I’d left his siblings with his wife. But he’s a good boy, and in the end, he just said he would see us when we returned.
We crowded into Caleb’s boat while the other fishermen brought the catch along in a second vessel. The wind favored us, but the sun came up white and hot, quickly shrinking the little shade in the boat. Joanna tilted her face towards the sky.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Until a storm blows up,” I said.
She looked around. The day was clear, the sun warming the green shoulders of the mountains and the roofs of Magdala off to our left. “Storms?”
“They come on quick,” I said. “It’s good to be prepared.”
“You can be prepared and still enjoy the weather.” Joanna said. When I shrugged, she turned her face to the sun again. “Maybe this is what it feels like in the Teacher’s kingdom.”
Of all the things the Teacher told us, I had the hardest time with that one. Who has time to focus on the next life, when you have this one to worry about?
“I haven’t been to Capernaum since I was a little girl,” Joanna said. I resisted the urge to say: Yesterday? “I remember it being wonderful.”
I frowned. “Well … if there’s a place on earth that resembles the kingdom, Capernaum isn’t it.”
A few hours later we docked at a stone pier in Capernaum’s harbor. A harbor agent arrived to check Caleb’s licenses, leaving us free to find the Teacher. Before we left Caleb’s eyes caught mine: Be careful, be patient.
He knows my mind, too.
We made slow progress through the port, as Asher and Joanna kept pausing to goggle at the sights. Capernaum was crowded with merchants from Egypt in the south and Damascus in the north and every point in between along the great sea road. We saw rich men in fine clothing and glinting jewelry, stoic caravan guards with their hands on their sword hilts, slaves sweating under the high sun. We heard Greek shouted in a thousand accents, passed stalls selling dried fruit and pickled fish, and kept our distance from the roving centurions in their gleaming armor.
On one corner we passed a blind beggar, and Joanna said that we should bring back bread for him. At the next corner, a man possessed by a demon rolled in the dirt, trying to bite an imaginary tail. Joanna said we should ask the Teacher to help him. I urged Asher forwards: If we stayed on the streets any longer, Joanna would devise plans to save the whole city.
The synagogue was a noble building of black basalt. Inside we found a crowd just as diverse as the one we’d left. There were Jews and Gentiles from many nations, rich men and poor, even some slaves. Joanna and I were far from the only women.
And sitting among them was the Teacher. I had seen other self-proclaimed prophets before; in the days after old King Herod died, you couldn’t shake a fig tree without two or three messiahs falling out. They were all eccentrics: wild hair and eyes, hairshirts, props like a shepherd’s crook or a rusted sword (different messiahs, but both claimed that their instruments belonged to King David).
But the Teacher dressed and spoke simply. He wore the same simple tunic as yesterday, his feet bare, his hair frizzy and unkempt. He had the strong arms and shoulders of a carpenter, long thin limbs and a thin face, his hands and feet rough with callouses. He looked like one of my neighbors.
The Teacher spotted us and smiled like we were old friends. “Welcome, brother and sisters.”
Asher stood, stunned, until I nudged him.
“Teacher!” Asher said, too loudly. “When did you get here?”
I wanted to bury my face in my hands. We’d crossed the sea, and my brother was making small talk.
The Teacher laughed. “Be honest with me, Asher bar Joses. You’re here for more bread.”
Asher paled, but the Teacher offered a reassuring smile. “I understand. We’re all trying to get by, aren’t we — spending our days in toil to fill our bellies. But I say to you: Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life. That is what I can offer you, as my Father wishes.”
A riddle? I nudged Asher again. Be direct. Just ask him.
Joanna stepped forward, looking frightened. “What work should we do, Teacher?”
“This is the work of God,” the Teacher said, “to believe in the one he sent.”
Joanna smiled, like that was any sort of answer.
“We didn’t come here for a theological debate,” I whispered to Asher.
“Teacher,” he said, “we certainly believe in you after the great works you performed yesterday. Could you show us another sign, so that these good people may also come to believe? Perhaps you could give us manna, like Moses.”
My brother is as subtle as a runaway oxcart.
But when I looked at the Teacher, he was looking at me. His expression was both sympathetic and amused: the look one of my sisters might have given me across the table when Asher said something ridiculous at the Seder.
“Manna,” he said. “You know, the point of that story isn’t that Moses was a great miracle worker. It’s that my Father gave the people bread in their time of need. But not just ordinary bread: the bread of God that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
I have always had great respect for rabbis, even the ones who I considered pompous or senile. But in that moment — tired and far from home and beginning to feel hunger roil in my belly — I nearly said: And can my children eat that bread?
Again Joanna spoke, her voice trembling with emotion: “Sir, give us this bread always.”
He smiled at us again, and there was something sad in that smile.
“I am the bread of life,” he said. “Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”
For a moment the synagogue was silent. Asher looked to Joanna, and then to me. “What?”
I felt like I’d just spent a morning at the hand-mill, weary to my bones.
“He has nothing for us,” I said.
The rest of the crowd began to react, some asking questions, others muttering.
“I knew his parents,” I heard a man say. “Who does he think he is?”
The Teacher began to speak again, but I walked out. I’d heard enough, and I had hungry children waiting at home.
But as I turned to go, the Teacher caught my eye once again. There was an apology in his gaze, and a question: Do you understand?
No one spoke as we boarded Caleb’s boat and eased out of the harbor. The wind was against us now, and we had to slowly tack our way across the sea. It was evening by then, the sky painting itself in purples and oranges to meet the night.
“I don’t understand,” Asher said, at last. “Why wouldn’t he help us?”
Neither did I. I wished I’d shouted that at the Teacher. But in truth, as angry as I was at him for denying our request, I was angrier at myself for entertaining such a foolish hope.
“He’s a prophet,” I said. “He’s too concerned about the next world to see what people are dealing with in this one.”
A long moment of silence, and then Joanna said: “I think … I think he was speaking about this life.”
Asher sighed. “My love, please…”
“Let her speak,” I said. She was the only one of us who had seemed to follow what the Teacher was saying.
“He was offering us something.” Joanna sat looking back towards Capernaum. “Not the bread we wanted, but … something we need to live. Something that makes life worthwhile.”
“We need food,” Asher said.
“Yes,” she said. “But life is more than just surviving, isn’t it? I hope it is.”
She fell silent. Asher gave me a look: You’re right, she’s crazy. I ignored him.
I watched the shore pass. The mountains were a sleepy blue beneath the bruised sky, and I could see the winking light of flames from the settlements we passed. In the cities servants and slaves would be stoking the cook fires while their masters reclined, and in the villages women like me would be preparing a few fish and some vegetables, already worrying about tomorrow as they readied for tonight. That would be me as soon as I got home, scheming to make a few small loaves last the rest of the week.
“Do not work for food that perishes,” the Teacher said. But it always does: The bread goes stale or moldy or you simply eat it all and then it’s hours of backbreaking work to make more. Over and over, until you’re too old to work the grinding stone. The bread always vanishes, but the hunger never does.
And I thought: This can’t be all there is.
I looked at Joanna, lost in her thoughts as usual, and wondered if she’d understood the Teacher better than any of us. I said that he had nothing for us, but maybe that wasn’t true: Maybe I just hadn’t recognized what he was offering. He was one of us, like she said. He understood hunger. He must have known what turning us away without bread meant. I didn’t believe he would do that without giving us something of even greater value.
As I said, I’ve learned to be practical. I focus on what is right in front of me, what I need to get through the day.
But what if there was something more?
Something that gives life meaning. Something that makes the impossible possible.
What then?
By the time we reached the shore, I had made up my mind.
“You will eat with us tonight,” I said.
Asher’s brow furrowed like I’d spoken Latin. “What?”
“You said you ate all your bread last night. We have some. You’ll eat with us.”
“No,” Asher said. “You don’t have enough for us and the children.”
“I didn’t say it would be a feast, but it will be enough.”
“You won’t have any left for tomorrow!”
“Joanna and I can bake together,” I said. “The Teacher shared his bread with us. The least we can do is share our bread with each other.”
Asher began to protest again, but Joanna soothed him. Caleb caught my eye and flashed a smile, just for me.
That night, at least, we’d all eat. There would be work to do if we wanted to eat tomorrow, but there always would be. The things of this earth perish, no matter how tightly you grasp onto them.
I want my children to end the day with full bellies. But I also want them to grow up believing that more is possible than what they see before them. That their lives are more than the daily toil for survival. That the Lord offers them more than that.
I want to believe that, too.
The bread we ate that night was the same as always: tough and gritty, largely flavorless. But it was also sweeter, because it was shared.
Everything was the same. And everything had changed.
Top image: Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry by Paul, Herman and Johan Limbourg (public domain)