The Discourses of Controversy: Meditations on John 6-12

By Adrienne von Speyr

The mystic von Speyr continues her reflections on the Gospel of John, concentrating here on the discourses of Jesus in chapters 6-12. The various other events included by Saint John in these chapters are seen primarily by him as the occasion for new confrontations between Jesus and his disputants. These reflections present the moment in which the limited, self-satisfied standpoint of Christ's hearers must let itself be burst open into the unlimited, loving standpoint of the Lord.

Some of the controversial discourses in this section of John's Gospel which von Speyr comments on include: The Multiplication of the Loaves; The Bread of Life; The Adulteress; The Man Born Blind; The Raising of Lazarus; The Good Shepherd, and The Entry into Jerusalem. The combination of the Scripture verses and von Speyr's moving meditations provide rich nourishment for prayer and spiritual reading. This series is particularly important because the spirituality of Saint John, the Apostle of Divine Love, was the central source of von Speyr's own spiritual life.

Adrienne von Speyr was a contemporary Swiss convert, mystic, wife, medical doctor and author of some 70 books on spirituality and theology. She entered the Church under the direction of one the greatest theologians and spiritual writers of the 20th century, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, who became her spiritual director and confessor for the last 30 years of her life. Her writings, recognized as a major contribution to the great mystical writings of the Church, are being translated and published by Ignatius Press. Among her most important works are Book of All Saints, Confession, The World of Prayer, Handmaid of the Lord, and The Passion from Within.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Mar 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781681492810

Adrienne von Speyr

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) was a Swiss medical doctor, a convert to Catholicism, a mystic, and an author of more than sixty books on spirituality and theology. She collaborated closely with theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, her confessor for twenty-seven years, and together they founded the Community of Saint John. Among her most important works are Handmaid of the Lord, Man before God, Confession, and her commentaries on the Gospel of Saint John.

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FOREWORD

Like the volume that has already appeared on the Farewell Discourses, the present volume, too, explicitly calls itself a book of meditation. Thus it is not an exegetical work; one will discover in this book neither philological nor exegetical information, nor any other kind of academic information. It is not even a reading book that one might work through quickly; it would probably look merely colorless and long-winded, disappointing and wearying the reader. Its aim is to be truly a help for meditation.

It always starts from the presupposition that Christian meditation on the divine word must be aware that what lies before it is no finite human word, but the infinite divine word in human garb. The meaning of this word is inexhaustible and utterly profound, and—since it is divine—it can ultimately be interpreted only by means of itself. Each divine word, and thus each verse of the Gospel, contains latent within itself the fullness of the eternal life, the mysteries of heaven, the ocean of trinitarian truth and love. Mary, who chose the best part, was able to penetrate, as she heard each word that comes from the mouth of the divine Truth, through to the point where all the individual truths stream together to form the indivisible, absolute, total truth. But each of these words wishes to be taken initially as if it were the only word: with the soul’s entire gift of itself, a gift made possible by grace, through faith, love and hope. Indeed, the grace that receives—which is precisely the life of faith, love and hope in us—is of no other substance than the grace that reveals; the faith through which we believe and the faith in which we believe are only two faces of the same divine reality that God has communicated to us. This is why it is continually presupposed in this book that faith, love and hope—these three that remain when all the other gifts shall have passed away—are also best able to disclose to us something of the essence of eternal life, of the inner life of God.

The choice of the title Discourses of Controversy may be less appropriate than the title of the following volume, Farewell Discourses, but it can be justified a parte potiori. Although various other events are included here and there by the Evangelist in these chapters, these too are primarily seen by him as the occasion for new disputes in which the Lord confronts the Jews. In keeping with the intention of the discourses themselves, the primary aim in the meditation on these is to present the moment in which the limited, egocentric standpoint of the Jews, based on reason, must let itself be burst open into the unlimited, loving standpoint of the Lord, based on faith. This one step—the step from the Old Covenant, which has been given a false human interpretation, over to the New—must be carried out in ever new variations, in ever new illumination, in grace that takes on ever new forms. Thus, nothing in these discourses of the Lord is historical, belonging only to the past: rather, everything is relevant to our own period, everything is contemporary, Christian life.

—Hans Urs von Balthasar

THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE LOAVES

6:1-2. After this, Jesus crossed over to the other shore of the Lake of Galilee, which is also called the Lake of Tiberias. A numerous crowd followed him, because they saw the wonders he performed on those who were sick.¹ The great crowd follows the Lord. They do so, not in faith, not in love, but in curiosity and in the self-seeking expectation of further signs. But the Lord makes a distinction between this kind of curiosity and a mere egotism. He makes use of the weakness of the curiosity in order to form out of it a path that leads to faith. But he never employs the sin of egotism as a preparing of the way for love. The Lord never makes use of our sin in order to redeem us from our sin, for active egotism includes the active turning away from love. But where weakness and paralysis are present, the Lord is able, and desires, to begin something new. It is not the recognition of our sin that leads us to repentance and conversion but the recognition of his love. In order to free us from our state of captivity in sin, his love leads us away from sin; for sin is a sheer hindrance in us, never an occasion of growth. But the Lord can very well make use of a weakness in order to lay down a path that leads from it to a faith that will lead to love only later on.

In its curiosity, the crowd begins to have a faint perception of his grace. It follows him because it has seen the wonders he performed on those who were sick. Thus, the reason is not something that the people themselves have experienced in their own persons: and so they think that they are objective and detached spectators of an event that does not affect and concern them in their own internal lives. And yet, there already lies a touch of selflessness in this. The people in the crowd are no longer totally occupied with themselves and their own need. They have begun to open themselves out to something that is not themselves.

6:3-4. But Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Passover was near, the feast of the Jews.

The Lord takes up a position vis-à-vis the crowd when he climbs the mountain and sits down. He shows himself in all his humanity to these human beings: he does not hide the fact that he needs rest. What he does here is in sharp contradistinction to their previous confrontation with his divinity, which had appeared to them in a form too strong and too invulnerable. They had not found any human road of access to it. But now he shows them his humanity, and this seems to them to lack the divine dignity. Previously they had been irritated at finding no sign of weakness in his spirit, now they are irritated because they discover these signs of weakness in his flesh, but without being able to convict him of sin. They recall to themselves the wonders at which they have been present. They have seen the conversion of the Samaritan woman, but they have not found any trace of forbidden fleshly lust in her relationship to the Lord. Likewise, they have seen the lame man and the son of the officer, but they have found no spark of self-satisfaction and arrogance in the word with which the Lord exercises his power. In each miracle, they have been lying in wait for the moment he would be exposed, when the possibility of sin would become visible, so that the marvelous and the good in Jesus would change into their human opposites, and in him, too, that which was light would be balanced by that which was dark. But they have not found anything in his spirit, and the need that is derived from his bodily weakness and tiredness only lets his spiritual inviolability shine forth all the more strongly. The Lord uses human weakness as the point of departure to make love grow in them instead of sin. The people seek in him the same weakness, or at least an initial sign of this—not in order to bear witness to him of their love, but in order to convict him of sin.

6:5. Now when Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a great crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip: Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?

The Lord feels the physical need of the people; he shares it himself. On the basis of this solidarity in need, he feels responsible for them, and thus he looks around for bread. But he does not wish to bear any responsibility without giving his disciples a share in it: this is why he asks Philip where they are to get the bread. The disciple is to have his share in what is now going to happen, he is to walk with Jesus from the very beginning along the entire path of the miracle. In this question between himself and the disciple, the Lord creates a common obligation that is so deep that is goes beyond the human standard of measurement and is not at all visible to the others. And when he gives Philip admittance to his mystery and bids him share in carrying its burden, the catholic element is present. This is basically present already, as soon as the Lord appears in the world. In Mary, who conceives the Lord, the entire Church is already prefigured, since Mary is the sinless archetype of every creature who is drawn into the work of the Trinity and initiated into it. Just as at that time God did everything but did not wish to work without the human person, so now, too, the Lord will perform the miracle visibly and in person, yet he will not do it without the disciple. He gives him a share in the responsibility, a share that is invisible and, so to speak, official. Philip perhaps does not perceive at all what is going on or into what he is being drawn. And yet, through the question of the Lord, he is included, made the object of obligation and demand in a supernatural manner. This is one of those acts whereby the Lord recruits someone, permitting one who believes in him to share in his own working so that he may make him in a special measure a witness of what he himself performs. He accepts the human dimension as his framework when he draws men to himself and makes use of them in his work. Through people, he creates points of transition to himself. There are no steps that lead up to his pure divinity. But in his saints (and Philip is their representative here), he constructs a kind of stepladder that leads to himself. His cooperation is so subordinate, indeed, so microscopically small, that it in fact only casts a stronger light on the working of the Lord. But it is precisely in this function that he is needed. When he must appear later on as a witness to this scene, he will be able to describe its human element—the expectation and the curiosity of the crowd, its hunger, the gestures and words of the Lord—in all its humanity, making the miracle more vivid for people than it was for anyone else who was present in the crowd at that time, because he was the one to whom the Lord put his question, he was the one who participated in this action. Even at the moment of the question, he knew already that the Lord had an answer ready, even if he, Philip, did not know it yet; and, through the question, he himself already shared in the answer. He possessed the readiness that must be present in those of whom God makes demands: they do not know for what service they are being engaged, and they must be prepared for anything, but still they know that the Lord already knows everything in advance.

In the future, the Lord will always give those who are near him, those whom he chooses for himself, a small share both in his deeds and in his sufferings. And, even if this share were as tiny as this question, this little dialogue with Philip, he does not omit it: he draws people into his mysteries and into intimacy with him, so that they in turn may communicate this to the people, so that the divine element in these mysteries may be handed on to men in a wholly human way. Even when he occasionally gives one of those who belong to him the power to work miracles or lets him share in his suffering, perhaps bestowing the gift of his sufferings on him or allowing him to taste a drop of his anguish and his abandonment by God on the Cross, this happens only in order to use this person as a medium and mediator between himself and the people. The one who himself has tasted of the cup of the great suffering is able to support the others in their small sufferings; for the crowd, he can be a pointer to the Lord, because what they know only through hearing about it stands before their eyes, portrayed alive in him. He can bear witness to what the suffering of the Lord is.

The answer that the Lord expects to his question is offered, along with the question itself, to the one interrogated. It lies hidden in the question, and the one interrogated need only make it his own. The mystery of predestination lies in this inclusion of the answer in the question. When the Lord puts a question to someone, he knows whether this person will stand on his side; he knows the answer that he will receive. As God, he sees the Yes in advance, but also the No. If the answer he receives is a No, this is indeed no surprise for him as God, but it is a pain. This pain consists not only in the fact that the human person rejects him but even more essentially in the fact that God must nevertheless ask him this question, a question that some-how thrusts the human being deeper down into guilt than would have been the case if he had never been asked. Thus it could seem to be more merciful if God did not ask him, if God did not become the occasion for him to give a refusal: for, when he asks, he knows that he is increasing the person’s guilt. But the Lord cannot avoid asking this question. Through his Incarnation and his redemption, he has taken on himself a responsibility with regard to the person, the responsibility of taking the person seriously as a person and thus leaving the decision up to him. He may not compel him to accept salvation, he can only offer him salvation. The question he poses is the offer of salvation. Every question he poses is at the same time an offer of grace; each of his questions, as it were, swims in grace. He would never ask without at the same time offering in each question the grace of the fiat. Thus he presses on, in his very question, toward the correct answer. Wherever the person fails to hear the question of God, he will also fail to see God’s grace. But the Lord must treat the person as a free partner—otherwise, what he does would not be a deed of love. And, thus, even the question to which he already knows from all eternity the negative answer is the question of one who loves, a question posed in human love and, therefore, also in faith and hope. As God, the Lord knows the person’s No, but, as man, he hopes that the person’s answer will come in such a form that it will not be totally unacceptable to him. As man, he poses his divine question in the way one person speaks to another: with the expectation that he will not be disappointed, with faith in the goodness of the other, reckoning with the possibility (even when it is only a tiny possibility) that he will nevertheless receive a favorable answer. Even though, as God, he knows the person’s No, as the incarnate Lord, he wishes to give him the possibility of receiving at least a part of his grace within the framework created by his refusal. But, if he knows the answer will be a Yes, then he will pose the question all the sooner and all the more gladly. For, through such a fiat, the bond that unites the person to him will be infinitely strengthened. A wholly new relationship is established. God is enriched in his grace through this fiat, and the person who says Yes is enriched still more. For every grace that is received is fruitful; it remains grace, but it begins to work in the soul that receives it. In future, it is no longer possible to distinguish between question and answer: God’s question is received into the soul as the Word that was with God in the beginning and, thus, as the eternal answer to every human question. The sphere of work that the person receives through his readiness is from now on at the same time the sphere in which the Lord works; and the work he carries out is no longer personal work but Christian work. But such work becomes possible only when the person utters the Yes of eternity, which has been decisive from the very outset, as his own decision in time is too. In eternity, everything is decided, but, in time, everything must be decided ever anew. This is why there exist in time the innumerable transitions and vacillations between the Yes and the No; scarcely ever is either of them uttered in total purity; it is a long struggle in which the upper hand is gained gradually.

But the word of the person, which responds to God’s question, is always spoken into a darkness. For the word of God appears as a question and, thus, as something shrouded in darkness. If the person’s answer is No, then he does not basically know to what he is saying No, for he is closed vis-à-vis the grace of God, and he does not have a full view of the gift of God. But, if he says Yes, then in general terms he knows even less what he is doing, at least on the occasion of his first fiat. He does not know what awaits him, he simply yields himself, he is open for every act of filling by God. In the No, he closes himself up, but, in the Yes, a seed is deposited in him, a beginning of something that cannot be taken in at a single glance, comparable to the first fiat of a woman to the man she loves: she does not see completely what consequences this will have, she only moves with blind resoluteness along the path. Every No is a conclusion and thus sterile; every Yes is living and open and calls out to ever new life.

By stilling bodily hunger, the Lord intends to call forth a spiritual hunger in souls. When the fire of the body is quenched, the fire of the spirit is to be kindled into flame. All bodily needs are only parables and occasions for spiritual needs. Through the urgency of a bodily deficiency, the human person is to recognize that his spirit, too, is capable of suffering. And the Lord, who stills our bodily hunger and thus also creates a spiritual well-being for us, points us through this to the possibility of a stilling by God of our spiritual hunger too. From the relationship between body and spirit, we are to learn what the relationship is between the spirit and God. We are also to grasp that the relationship between body and spirit is in order when it is determined by the relationship of the spirit to God. Through the Lord’s question, Philip is drawn into this awakening and stilling of the spiritual hunger too. He himself suffers bodily hunger and is thereby made aware in the spirit of the hunger of others. Common need creates the possibility of active love of neighbor: when we notice the bodily hunger of others and attempt to still it, we become aware that there lives in us a spiritual hunger for love, which is stilled in us when we satisfy the needs of others but which in turn is awakened in the others through this act of satisfying it. Thus, through bodily works of love, the person leads the spirit of his neighbor to the Lord.

Since bodily hunger is only a parable of spiritual hunger, it is, finally, allowed and not seldom necessary to sacrifice a bodily well-being and comfort for the sake of a spiritual hunger or well-being. Here there lies the possibility of asceticism. If the ultimate measure of health lies no longer in the mere equilibrium between body and spirit but in the relationship between the person and God, then even an apparently disturbed equilibrium between body and spirit can be the expression of a deeper health on the part of the person. The equilibrium of the person who belongs to the heavenly world can establish and express itself through an apparently disturbed equilibrium of the person in this world. Philip is the symbol of this, too, when he takes on the role—initially, a role that is not at all desired and is unconscious—of the one who is led by an increasing hunger for God to forget and overlook more and more his bodily-spiritual well-being.

6:6. He said this in order to put him to the test; for he himself knew what he would do.

The disciple stands within the all-encompassing plan of the Lord. Since the Lord determines beforehand and knows what he wishes to do, the disciple need not know this. He does not yet sense anything of his own relationship to love of neighbor and to asceticism. He only stands ready, without knowing for what he will be needed. He does not even know that he is already being used. Nor need he know this, since the decision about him lies in the hand of the Lord. And yet, he is not employed as a dead instrument but as a human being. This is why he is tested. Each one who shares in the work of the Lord is continually tested by the Lord. Whether he is called to action or to contemplation, the call, as long as it sounds forth, is always a question too: Are you called? Where do you stand? The human person is not expected, in answer to this question, to comprehend the plans of God but only to be ready again and again to let himself be used blindly as an instrument by God; ready to acknowledge that the Lord already knows what he wishes to do.

6:7. Philip answered him: Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be sufficient for them, so that each would receive even only a small piece.

The disciple’s answer is a calculation, and a calculation that does not work out correctly. He mentions a sum, but one that is not sufficient to attain the goal of giving the crowd enough to eat. The sum he fixes is high; in itself, it is a possible sum, perhaps the most it would have been just barely possible to get hold of. But this extreme amount is insufficient. He does not mention the sum that would suffice, since this sum is, in practical terms, out of the question for those who are present at the scene. Thus he shows that he could be a prudent administrator. He reckons only with what is possible and arrives at the result: impossible. He expresses the outcome of the present situation: the crowd that stands here embodies a demand made of the Lord that he, as a human being, cannot satisfy. The crowd wishes to receive from him more than he, in human terms, can give them. With his calculation of impossibility, Philip shows that the crowd as a whole, but also each individual in the crowd, continually makes demands of the Lord that are, in human terms, absolutely excessive. With the sum he formulates, the disciple is the representative of these individuals who together make up the crowd, each one of whom requires of the Lord infinitely more than he can give in human terms. As a man, the Lord is confronted with a task that utterly goes beyond him. If he were only a human being, he would be like a doctor required to give care alone to an illimitable battlefield full of dying and wounded men: while he saved the lives of ten men, thousands would die. Even if he were to dedicate himself with the whole of his soul to all of them, still only extremely few of them would receive anything from this dedication. That would be the situation of the Lord in the world if he were nothing more than a perfect man. When he is abandoned in suffering by the Father, then he will endure the absolutely excessive demand made on his humanity by the crowd. And only the hidden divinity will accomplish the miracle that his humanity, of which excessive demands are made, nevertheless—and precisely because of these excessive demands—will become for everyone the food that gives more than every demand made upon it.

6:8-9. One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him: There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what is that for so many?

A new suggestion is made from the group of disciples, just as impossible as the first suggestion. Previously it was a question of money, now it is a question of materials. But the situation is unchanged; the disproportion is the same. On all sides, the sober calculation comes to the conclusion that there is no relationship between the demand made by the world and the human possibility of satisfying this demand. The disciples do not lack faith. They have seen miracles and have believed. They do not close themselves in the face of what is to come, but they do not open themselves to it either. Andrew indicates the loaves and the fish, but as if pointing to something that cannot be taken seriously into consideration. He does not know that the Lord will nevertheless take them seriously into consideration, and that, precisely at the point where he, the disciple, sees the impossibility, the Lord will create a possibility. Thus this disciple, too, is included in the event: he must be the first to mention and state something that will receive genuine meaning only through the word of the Lord. The Lord takes his starting point in what his disciple has said. He starts out on the path to which he is directed. But, by yielding in this way, he shows his own superiority, which is able to arrive at its own goal along all paths.

6:10. Jesus said: Let the people sit down. For there was much grass in that place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number.

The Lord wants the crowd to be comfortable. They are to feel themselves to be his guests; none of them is to have the feeling in Jesus’ company that his business is being dispatched quickly or only as a side issue. Things are to be ceremonious at this banquet, even though it is held in the open field. Wherever the Lord happens to be, he is at home. Every place belongs to him, and he is the host everywhere. He tells the disciples to organize the seating. Their task is the preparation of the miracle. But this means that they stand at the side of the Lord and appear before the crowd as his fellow workers. Later, when the faith of the disciples has grown, they will be able to receive greater tasks. Here, they are initially to learn how one treats a crowd that does not yet believe. One must create an atmosphere around them, indeed, one must awaken a certain curiosity in them, making use of their expectancy. They will receive faith and love later on; now they are to begin by feeling at ease. It is not as if the disciples have the task of intensifying the crowd’s delight in sensational events: curiosity is not in itself something for which one should strive. But the result of curiosity can be a certain readiness and opening, which can be transformed through the miracle into Christian readiness and opening.

6:11. Now Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed them to those who were seated. He did the same with the fish, as much as they wanted.

He takes bread, human food, something that is well suited to still the hunger that the people are making known. And he adds the fish to the bread: this is the meal that was customary in that area, the simplest meal, which suited the way of life of the people. First he takes this food into his own hand. He receives it from the hand of men, touches it and thereby takes it into his own possession. When he hands it out, he will be distributing what is his own. Perhaps these loaves have passed through many hands. But the decisive point is that it is through his hands that they have passed. Previously, there was nothing to distinguish these loaves from other loaves. Now the primary distinction is that they have passed through his hands. They are no longer the same loaves; an invisible quality has changed them into something quite different. This is the quality possessed by all things that belong to the Lord: they can be handed on infinitely. They can be divided endlessly and become more unified and richer by the act of distribution than they were before. But this quality is not visible to our eyes.

The Lord gives thanks. This is the gesture with which he hands over everything to the Father. This is the word of blessing through which he transforms what he touches into something that belongs to the Father, through which he gives thanks for the fact that it belongs to the Father. This is not a thanks that is finished in one word and that would be limited in the single act of giving, but a living thanks with a power that permits the bread to be multiplied. In this thanks, the Son shows his unity with the Father; he shows the way in which he works, since he does nothing without working together with the Father; he shows the fruitfulness of his thanks: for, in the offer made to the Father, in giving back every gift to the Father, the seal of the Father is imprinted on the gift, and this seal gives it the power to multiply itself. Finally, he shows in this thanks the transition in himself from the humanity to the divinity. Externally, what people see in him is the man who holds the loaves in his hands and thanks with human words; but this thanks goes at once and directly and without any break over into the eternal thanks of the divine Son to the Father.

Then the Lord lets the loaves be distributed. The multiplication takes place in the distribution, but in such a way that this is not seen or noticed. The miracle itself is not related at all. The visible and sensational growth of the bread is simply omitted. All that is visible is the simple event: all receive some of the food, and all receive enough. The measure of satisfaction depends on the individual: the one who has a greater hunger for the gift of the Lord receives more, while the one who grasps less receives less. He does not force his gift on anyone. No one will feel himself underprivileged because another receives more. For, when it is the Lord who is doing the distributing, the fundamental issue is never quantity but something that remains incomparable and is different in each case.

Nevertheless, a distinction is made between the loaves and the fish. He distributes the bread according to a measure that he himself determines. We are told with respect to the fish that the crowd could take as much as they wanted, according to their own estimate. For there are two kinds of hunger in us. The Lord satisfies the first kind, the essential hunger for bread, for the principal nourishment, as he determines himself. He leaves to our own estimate the satisfaction of the other hunger, which is, as it were, a subordinate hunger for the additional dish. It must remain up to the Lord himself to satisfy the hunger for the bread that the Lord himself is. This bread is what we need, and without it we should die. But freedom too has a place in this necessity. Thus the will of God stands above a human life as a necessity, but within this necessity God allows the human person the freedom to structure his life in one way or another. If a person marries, then he is bound by marriage, but he can structure his married life in freedom. In the same way, the vocation to religious life is unqualified, but within the Order he has not lost the freedom of self-determination and self-guidance. God demands that one make the sacrifice of one’s life; but he leaves up to the person the way in which he wishes to do this. He demands love of neighbor, but he does not give any individual prescription for this. He demands asceticism as a principle, but no individual ascetical practice. The framework is marked out everywhere, but the human person has the freedom to fill out this framework. One cannot change anything of what belongs to God; but the widest area of freedom is left open for what belongs to me, provided only that this moves within what belongs to him; for ultimately it is Jesus, too, who distributes the fish.

6:12. When they had eaten their fill, he said to his disciples: Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.

As soon as the miracle has been worked, the Lord goes farther. He does not remain with what he has done, he does not emphasize it. He sets the full stop at once by having the witnesses to the miracle, namely, the fragments left over, gathered up. In this, he shows that he is an administrator. The action proceeded from him, and the leftovers, too, remain at his disposition. He does not leave them to the arbitrary choice of the crowd. The fact that these fragments are left over is the physical image of the fact that every grace the Lord bestows is given without measure, so that it overflows the capacity of the recipient to grasp it. But even this overflow remains in his administration, available to him: it does not simply flow out into nothingness. He does not say what he makes of it or how he disposes of it. He only shows that not even his overflow is permitted to be lost. It must be directed back into his administration. Five thousand people communicate, the Lord has given a share in himself to this enormous number, and each has received that for which he hungered (and his presence on the scene gave him a right to this), and yet there would still have been enough there for numberless others. The grace is there, whereas the unnumbered persons are not there. The calculation, which did not work out correctly at the beginning, does not work out correctly at the end either. Just as it remains a mystery how five loaves suffice to feed five thousand, so it remains a mystery how, at the end, what remains goes back to the Lord. The same surplus that is found here, a surplus of bread and of the Eucharist, is found also in prayer and in every other gift of the Lord. Every prayer, like every Communion and every gift that is received, ends in a calculation that does not work out correctly. The surplus is always present, whether one sees it or only senses it or, indeed, knows nothing of it at all; but one never sees what becomes of this surplus. It is never possible to see completely the economics of grace in its totality. Only individual phases are clear: the hunger of the people, the love of the Lord, the satisfaction of their hunger. But this takes place within a sudden intensification into the dimension of measurelessness, an intensification that one can no longer see completely. The leftovers are the clear testimony that the measure has been surpassed. But they are never of such a kind that one can calculate on the basis of them how much the Lord has made available as a whole. It was not possible earlier on to express the demand of the hungry crowd in a determined sum: how much less would it be possible to express precisely the offer made by the Lord. And yet it remains possible for God to see in its totality what it is not possible for man to see completely. This is why the surplus must be directed back to the Lord. All that we know with certainty is that nothing from the stupendous gift of the Lord is lost. It returns into the very mystery of the act of pouring out. But the Lord expects that our hunger shall intensify in proportion as his surplus increases. In fact, there exists a mutual causality here. The surplus becomes greater through every new multiplication, that is, through each new act whereby the gift passes through people. For the surplus is a remnant of what was placed at our disposition. This is its essence: to be what is left over. The eucharistic Lord would be poorer if we did not receive his Eucharist. The Church, too, would be poorer if there were no prayers awakened in her that, instead of stopping short at individual petitions and the granting of these, went on (like every true prayer) beyond this point to God and returned in their surplus into the treasury of the Lord and of the Church.

6:13. So they gathered them in, and they gathered twelve baskets full of fragments of the five barley loaves that had remained after they had eaten.

Now we also see how great the surplus was. It is much greater than what was there at the beginning: more than twice as great. It is gathered and inspected by those who stand in the service of the Lord. Not for nothing are there twelve baskets. The surplus is entrusted to the administration of those who have to mediate the grace of the Lord, the saints. But we are not told whether the Apostles went to the poor with the surplus or whether they used it to prepare a new banquet. Everything remains wholly mysterious. There is only a gathering in, so that nothing may be lost. In the office of the saints, too, there happens much that they themselves cannot see completely. They stand closer than we to the mystery, and therefore they themselves are more wrapped in the mystery than we are. Precisely because they are more initiated into the mystery, they also understand that it must remain a mystery. Therefore they themselves conceal the mystery by standing between God and men. They are like servants who have the task of protecting the intimate sphere of the Lord. Thus the Apostles come forward and clear away the testimonies to the miracle. It is as if they were drawing down a curtain. No one knows how the twelve baskets were used.

6:14. When the people now saw what a miracle he had worked, they said: This is truly the prophet who is to come into the world.

The people believe on the basis of the miracle, like all those who have previously come to faith. And yet their faith in Christ contains something new. They do not believe in an individualized personal revelation of the Lord but see him in the framework of the Old Testament promise: he is the one who was promised to the people. They can do this, because the miracle of the Lord has transformed them from a contingent crowd into a people of God. This is the first time that the Lord has performed a miracle, not for an individual, but for a crowd. He has not healed a sickness but has satisfied a universally human need. He has satisfied the hunger of the one, but also of the second who stood beside him, of the third and of the thousandth—of the one who was known and of the one who was unknown. Thus, from the outset, this miracle, which satisfied a wholly personal need in each individual, effects a fellowship in need and creates a deeper communion through the common sharing in the miracle. In this way, there comes into being a quite different faith from what was the case in the earlier miracles. Then, there were only two who stood over against each other: the one who worked the miracle and the one on whom it was worked. And the crowd stood by, watching this intently, and believed. Now we have, standing over against each other, the one who works and the nameless, impersonal element of the crowd. And it is only within this impersonal element that each individual is touched and affected in a wholly personal manner. Thus, what comes into being here is the fellowship of the Church, in which persons unknown and known stand beside us, in which I as an individual disappear in an uncounted, nameless crowd, an almost colorless community—and yet, precisely by being submerged in this way, I receive the most personal graces, the graces of communion. This form of the Church is her Catholic form, because the most personal dimension of the grace designated for the individual is given to him only in the framework of this impersonal fellowship and is multiplied thanks to this fellowship. The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves remains the origin and basis of a fundamental characteristic of the ecclesial grace. But if, in a certain sense, an act of foundation takes place here, there is also, in another sense, a continuation and confirmation of something that already exists: of the Church in the Old Covenant. This nameless crowd, which is predestined here to become community—since it has come together to hear the Lord, it has the same hunger, the same expectation, it has sat down together and has eaten its fill together—did not become a community only now: it possesses its common faith, its common promise, its common exposition of the word of God; it itself does not know when it began to believe, it is the community of the people of God. Here the Church of the Old Covenant makes the transition into the Church of the New Covenant.

6:15. When Jesus recognized that they came and wanted to carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

The crowds want to make him king, because they have recognized the difference between themselves and him and understand that in future he can no longer be just someone or other in their midst. He must be distinguished from them. They believe that they can do justice to this necessity by making him king. But, by attempting to do this, they make it known that they do not know that he is already king. They imagine that they know his power and see it completely and hold that it would be possible to express this power through a worldly dignity. This would mean the satisfaction of their need to have him acknowledged, creating a clear relationship between them, and the persistent, silent question the Lord poses to them would be answered and cut short once and for all. He would possess a clearly defined power with authority that would indeed belong to him but that would derive from them and thus would be limited by their will. That would mean insurance and certainty for the future. They themselves would have behaved correctly and properly with regard to him, and thus they would have acquired for themselves the right to be dealt with by him according to the criterion of justice. Their mutual relationship would have a clear form, that of lord and servant. And the living question posed by the Lord to them would no longer be possible, the question that generates a new and deeper question every time it is answered. They have understood one thing perfectly well: that if one believes in him, the prophet, one comes into a relationship that implies a deeper obligation. They are ready for this obligation. But only as long as it is they themselves who determine and control the meaning and the measure of his sovereignty. It is to remain a human power, with advantages they themselves enjoy; no doubt, it is a power bestowed out of a feeling of justice and gratitude, but contained within fixed human laws.

The Lord knows this. He knows both what they intend to do with him and what they intend concerning themselves. This is why he withdraws. And the man who reaches out to the Lord’s dignity—even if only in order to give him this dignity—finds himself clutching empty air. The Lord takes no one with him when he withdraws now—not the crowd, for that question does not arise, nor even any of the disciples, for they too need a solitude. And he himself needs a period of silent withdrawal to the Father. If the disciples understood him, then they would also know that this period is necessary, and they would not feel themselves abandoned by him during it. They would know that they were one with him precisely in such solitude, just as he is one with the Father in this solitude. But they do not yet understand this. The withdrawal of the Lord is not a departure out of his humanity into the triune Godhead. Nor is it an escape from men, who have disappointed him, to God, an escape from exhausting action into the contemplation that saves him: it is a breathing space within his human mission. A turning to the Father, just as everyone who has a mission and needs to collect himself within this mission turns to the Father. A repose in the intimacy of the Father. A moment of dialogue, of prayer, or perhaps also simply a moment of being within the shelteredness of the relationship between Father and Son: the human expression for the simplicity of this divine relationship, which is governed only by the law of love, far removed from all thoughts of kingship and all human constitutions. A wordless meeting, totally natural and not arbitrary, the unity of the perfect obedience and the perfect love of the Son. Almost as when father and mother leave the children for a moment in order to find repose in silent intimacy. In relation to the Father, this is the most utterly natural attestation of love; in relation to human beings, it is the natural claim laid upon Jesus by an inborn solitude.

THE STORM ON THE LAKE

6:16-19. When it was evening, his disciples went down to the lake, got into a boat and crossed the lake in the direction of Capharnaum. It had already become dark. And Jesus had not yet come to them. But the lake rose because a mighty wind blew. When they had rowed twenty-five or thirty stadia, they saw Jesus walking on the lake and coming near to the boat. And they became afraid.

The disciples are used to night and storm and a high sea. The most that such things can cause in them is a slight unease, something that is in keeping with human nature. But there is one thing to which they are no longer accustomed: being alone. For it has already become second nature to them to be with the Lord. When he left them for some moments earlier on, they trusted that he would return at once. They did not feel themselves to be abandoned. And they always knew that the Lord was in command of their common situation. If something had to be done, it was the Lord who did it, alone or through them. Now it is the first time since they came to know the Lord and began to believe in him that they feel abandoned by him. They would have more easily borne being alone in a favorable situation. But they cannot bear being alone in this difficult situation. Everything in them fights against it. They had thought that they had entrusted all responsibility to the Lord by becoming his disciples and that it would be enough to stand there and to carry out clearly defined directions from the Lord concerning determined periods of time. They had no idea of the situation they had in reality entered, with no possibility of their seeing everything clearly. In a wholly human and naive way, they had imagined that their service with the Lord would be a kind of relationship of service between superior and subordinate, between lord and servant: the one commands, the other obeys. Even if one does not always understand why something is commanded, still there is always a clear command there, and one can take this as one’s point of orientation. They have now believed for a long time in the divine mission of the Lord and have thought that precisely the sublimity of his divine authority would extinguish their responsibility for themselves. They have not entered openly into the ever greater openness of God. They do not yet know that God does not reduce to servitude but makes people autonomous because he sends them. They have as yet no idea of the responsibility that the Lord will have to entrust to them later on. They do not grasp that they have received from the Lord everything he has communicated to them: his society, but also his solitude, his commands, but also his silence, his individual miracles, but also the great miracle of his being itself. Their faith is still earthly and narrow and has still to come to know the breadth of God.

Now they see the Lord walking on the water and coming near to the boat. They see him in a totally unexpected way, and he does what is unheard-of in an utterly natural manner. But because he does not come in the way they have expected him to come, fear falls upon them. They have had no more intense wish than that the Lord should draw near to them once more: but now that he is there, their natural unease changes into panic. For they had suffered earlier because of the lonely breadth of the Lord. Now, this solitude comes toward them, and, since they do not understand it, it seems to them to be something threatening. Thus they experience that the presence of the Lord can be much more unbearable than his absence. For it comes in an unforeseen way, impossible to take in at a single glance; the existence of the Lord has the form of a miracle with a meaning and necessity that are not transparent. Up to now, the Lord has performed only miracles that are meaningful in external terms: in order to heal someone (but they are not sick), in order to bring to faith one who does not believe (but they believe already), in order to satisfy a physical need (if his desire is to relieve their solitude, why does he not simply join them?). They are terrified by the thought that the Lord could perform such an unaccustomed miracle precisely for them. They feel threatened by this, exposed before him. It is not simply the incomprehensible element that makes them afraid but this incomprehensibility that is drawing near to them, coming closer, intended personally for them. Perhaps they will never again completely lose this fear, which they experience now for the first time: the fear of what cannot be grasped, when all criteria vanish, and they are overwhelmed on all sides, swamped and surpassed. Nothing of what was considered up to now as given and guaranteed retains the same unshakable character now: it is shaken. For there are no boundaries to what is coming here and will always come from now on. It was uncomfortable to be alone, but it is much more uncomfortable to be continually with someone whom one does not know and yet whom one cannot send away, someone who issues a challenge to us every moment through his very existence and calls us wordlessly to account, someone who is a criterion that always shatters our own criteria. Even if we attempt to make our faith available to him in continuous service, there remains an uncertainty even within our own limited mission and work about whether what we are doing truly correspond; to the charge given us. The feeling of alienation on the part of the disciples contains a further element: their yearning has been fulfilled in a way so different from what they had thought, in a way that has (so to speak) bypassed their yearning and brought the fulfillment without paying attention to the specific character of their desire. In a way that does not belong to them but completely and only to the Lord. In a way that does not close the openness of their yearning but, a fortiori, tears it open and broadens it. The night and the wind and the unquiet sea around them now change suddenly into night and wind and unquiet sea in their own hearts, and these in turn cross over into the night and the wind and the unquiet sea in the heart of the Lord. One sighs for him in one’s own night, but when he appears, one has almost the feeling that one was better sheltered in one’s own night than in the great night of the Lord, which makes excessive demands of us. There is a longing in us that ultimately does not at all want to be satisfied, because the clarity for which we have yearned is more unbearable than the chaotic waiting. Thus there are Christians who, in the very midst of the good works they do, always feel uneasy because their life may not correspond totally to the will of God, and they yearn for a higher call; but when this call comes to them, they become all the more frightened, because basically they have not genuinely expected it and held it to be possible. Or there is the prayer that begins in human unease and opens out into the explosive night and presence of God, a limited meditation that turns into an unexpected vision that makes excessive demands. It is always as if a small emptiness would be fulfilled in a greater emptiness, so that in our fear, the small, unclear yearning of our own is preferable to the new, higher, explosive unease that presents itself as the fulfillment of our yearning. This is the dark side in that mystery of the surplus and of the twelve baskets that were left over.

6:20. But he said to them: It is I. Do not be afraid.

In these words, It is I, with which he says that it is he, he describes precisely who he is. In his mouth, this word says: I am the Son of God, your Lord. For those whom he addresses, this is not a limited word, not a partial truth. In this word, they must receive all the truth, and, in the power of this word, they must find the path through everything, even through the Son who is the one way, to the eternal truth of the Father. The monosyllabic word of the Lord must be enough for them; it contains all the truth worth knowing.

Do not be afraid. They are afraid, and he says: Do not be afraid. As he permits them with one word to see who he is, so he also shows with one word that he sees who they are: people who are afraid of him, with a fear that is intensified by his appearance. But they are not to be afraid of him, not to be afraid of being left alone or of the deeper solitude of fellowship with him, not of his miracles or of the unaccustomed element that he himself is. Since the Father has given him the responsibility for men, then they ought also to know that he bears this responsibility as one who is equal to the task; and they are not to be afraid of being in his power. He also assumes the responsibility for the demands he will have to make of them, no matter how much fear these may cause because they overstretch the human being, tear him out of his own grip and hand him over to the Lord in this state of being torn open. He assumes the responsibility for this division in them, which robs them of every feeling of certainty; he knows what it is to be torn out of the life to which they are accustomed and to be thrown into an unknown life that takes on ever greater dimensions. He knows all this, because everything that is human finds its realization in him, but even more because