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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
Beloved, let us not contend with violent men, but learn when the doing so brings no hurt to our virtue to give place to their evil counsels; for so all their hardihood is checked. As darts when they fall upon a firm, hard, and resisting substance, rebound with great violence on those who throw them, but when the violence of the cast hath nothing to oppose it, it soon becometh weaker and ceaseth, so is it with insolent men; when we contend with them they become the fiercer, but when we yield and give ground, we easily abate all their …
Cyril of Alexandria
CHAPTER IV. That oftentimes the departures of Christ from Jerusalem signify the transferring of His grace to the Gentiles: wherein is also the discourse of the five barley loaves and the two little fishes. First I think it needful to tell my hearers, that the Lord evidently did not make His departures from Jerusalem without some most necessary reason. There is an economy on almost every occasion, and on the nature of things, as on a tablet, He inscribes mysteries. …
Theophylact of Ohrid
The Lord, after a stern speech to the Jews which aroused envy and anger in them, calms them by withdrawing from them and goes to the other side of the Sea of Tiberias. He calls the lake a sea because Divine Scripture "called the gatherings of waters seas" (Gen. 1:10).
Western Saints
Augustine of Hippo
But let us reflect a little here. Forasmuch as the Divine Substance is not visible to the eye, and the miracles of the divine government of the world, and ordering of the whole creation, are overlooked in consequence of their constancy; God has reserved to Himself acts, beside the established course and order of nature, to do at suitable times; in order that those who overlooked the daily course of nature, might be roused to wonder by the sight of what was different from, though not at all greater, than what they …
Hilary of Poitiers
In the case of the five loaves a miracle of the same type excites our wonder. By their increase five thousand men and countless women and children are saved from hunger; the method eludes our powers of observation. Five loaves are offered and broken; while the Apostles are dividing them a succession of new-created portions passes, they cannot tell how, through their hands. The loaf which they are dividing grows no smaller, yet their hands are continually full of the pieces. …
Thomas Aquinas
The Evangelist has presented the teaching of Christ on the spiritual life, by which he gives life to those who are born again. He now tells us of the spiritual food by which Christ sustains those to whom he has given life. First, he describes a visible miracle, in which Christ furnished bodily food. Secondly, he considers spiritual food (6:26). He does two things about the first. First, he describes the visible miracle. Secondly, he shows the effect this miracle had (6:14). He tells us two things about this miracle. …
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