Today, we consider the first multiplication of the “loaves”. It’s one of the great narratives related to the “bread” in Jesus life. What is the reason for Jesus to do something which before —also in the desert— was rejected as temptation?

The crowd had come to hear the Word of the Lord and had left everything. And so, as persons who had opened their hearts to God and to the others in reciprocity, they can receive the bread in an appropriate way. This miracle of the loaves is based on three elements: 1) the search for God, for His Word, with a correct orientation of the whole life; 2) bread should be asked of from God; 3) a fundamental element resides in the mutual disposition to share (listening to God turns into living with God and it leads from faith to love, to the discovery of the other).

—Jesus is not indifferent to men’s hunger, to their material needs, but places them in the adequate context and grants them the proper priority.