Diluting the miracle. . .

So I was catching up on some old news and read where Pope Leo XIV in Cameroon put his own spin on the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves says: “The multiplication of the loaves and the fish happened while sharing, that is the miracle. There is bread for everyone if it is given to everyone.”  Okay.  So that is the deal.  Jesus was making an object lesson by the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fish.  It was not a miracle so much as a teaching moment meant to inspire us to share what we have with those who have not.  I get it.  It makes it so much easier to deal with miracles in this way and so much less messier.  It does not even need to be a real fact or true to serve as an object lesson in this way and it might even make it better if it was not true -- lest undue attention be given to the work of the divine and take away from our work -- God's but our hands, after all.

Sigh.  It is as if that is what liberals do -- they turn miracles into object lessons far removed from fact and truth and turn it into a great big picnic lunch in which they a good time was had by all and everyone contributed something.   While that may be the rationale for a potluck, it hardly befits the narrative in Scripture.  That is great modern and humanistic thought but it is not quite what the Bible tells us nor does it fairly befit the miracle of Jesus.  It was not that Jesus or the disciples shared anything but that the mighty and everlasting God in flesh has power to multiply the little into more than enough -- complete with one basket of leftovers for every doubting Thomas among them.  If only Jesus had put more emphasis upon the work of the disciples in sharing this bread and fish!  That would have made it clear that the miracle is not in what was made present and distributed but in the distribution and how the folks were inspired to do likewise.

Which is a perfect segue into another miracle made more about the sharing than the gift.  That is the Holy Eucharist.  The emphasis upon the sharing instead of what is received makes the meal less Jesus' own and more ours -- which is exactly what we want.  It also makes it convenient to share with anyone and everyone despite what they believe, teach, and confess (or even if they are baptized!).  This is exactly the modern emphasis.  It is not in what is given, shed, broken, and distributed but the act of sharing that makes this eating special.  In this way it does not matter all that much what is received.  Instead, the real miracle is in the sharing.  This is exactly the pathetic and limp Eucharistic theology of indiscriminate fellowship built upon our want to minimize differences and doctrine and emphasize the act of personal interaction -- fellowship -- as if this was the primary gift of the meal and not the forgiveness of sins Jesus talked about in the Words of Institution.

While it saddens me to hear a pope go down that road, it does not surprise me.  Rome has been thoroughly in bed with modernism for a very long time and this is especially true of its hermeneutics.  The details that encourage us to see things as fact and truth are minimized in favor of sentiment and a synergistic call to do likewise -- as if the goal of our Savior was to awaken within us our own divine spark to be godly instead of save us from our sins and from the power of death.  How disappointing and yet utterly predictable!  Leo is showing his colors and he is more on the side of Francis and his Biblical liberalism than Benedict and his warnings about historical criticism and the separation of fact and truth from the narrative of Scripture.  As someone once told me so long ago, if you cannot contribute something of substance, keep silent.  Pope Leo, are you listening?