“Give Them Some Food Yourselves.”

The Epiphany season continues to reveal who Jesus is—not only in dazzling signs, but in the quiet, demanding way he invites his disciples to share his own compassion. Today’s theme, “Give them some food yourselves,” is one of the most unsettling commands Jesus ever gives. It confronts our instinct to pass on responsibility elsewhere and calls us into the very heart of divine love. The Gospel begins with Jesus moved by pity. He sees the crowd not as a problem to be managed, but as people in need— “like sheep without a shepherd.” Compassion, in the biblical sense, is never passive. It does not merely feel; it acts. Jesus teaches them, feeds them, and restores their dignity. Yet when evening comes and the disciples urge him to send the people away, Jesus turns the situation around: “Give them some food yourselves.” This command exposes our habitual response to human need. We are quick to say, “Send them away”—to institutions, to governments, to someone else with more resources, more time, more competence. Like the disciples, we calculate scarcity: two hundred days’ wages would not be enough. But Jesus is not asking for what we do not have; he is asking for what we do have. “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” Five loaves and two fish—insignificant by human standards, yet sufficient in the hands of Christ. The First Letter of John reveals why this is possible: “God is love.” Love does not begin with us; it begins with God. “Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.” Every act of Christian generosity flows from a prior gift. We can give because we have first received. When we offer our limited resources—our time, patience, listening, forgiveness, presence—God multiplies them beyond our imagining. This scene also has a Eucharistic rhythm. Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, and gives. What he does with bread, he desires to do with our lives. The disciples do not feed the crowd by themselves; they feed them with Jesus. They become channels, not sources. And when love is shared in this way, there is not only enough—there is abundance. Twelve baskets remain, a sign that God’s generosity always exceeds human fear. The Psalm echoes this vision of a world nourished by justice and peace, where the poor are defended and every nation comes to adore the Lord. The feeding of the crowd is not just a miracle for one afternoon; it is a sign of the Kingdom—a world ordered by compassionate responsibility, not indifference. Today, Jesus still looks at the crowds of our time: the hungry, the lonely, the spiritually malnourished, the young searching for meaning, families stretched thin, communities wounded by injustice. And he says to the Church, to each of us: “Give them some food yourselves.” Not because we are sufficient, but because love—God’s love—is already at work within us. As we continue this Epiphany journey, may we allow Christ to reveal himself through our willingness to give. When we place what little we have into his hands, love is multiplied, hunger is met, and the world catches a glimpse of the Kingdom already in our midst.