What will separate us from our love of Christ? It appears that Paul had intended this question to be e rhetorical one, for instead of giving the reader the opportunity to reflect for him/herself, he follows it with a list of the possible things that can come between us and our love of God. It was a question that he was using as a conclusion to the theme he had been building from the eighteenth verse of the eighth chapter:  the glorious destiny of believers. The destiny of believers is tied to that of Jesus Christ (believers are co-heirs with Christ [8:17]), something that has already been realized in the life of Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, believers have already attained that glorious destiny. For in Jesus Christ, the things that can overwhelm a believer (anguish, distress, persecution, and hunger) have been vanquished. We see this clearly demonstrated in the story of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand about which we hear in today’s Gospel reading. 
The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle that is recounted in all four gospels, a fact that points to its importance. Like the other signs that Jesus performed, the feeding of the five thousand (or the multitude) was integral to the fulfillment of Jesus’ mission. However, Jesus’ feeding of the hungry was special not only because of what it pointed to (final banquet in heaven) but also to what it did: it alleviated hunger and by so doing, did away with a threat to human life. Moreover, the miracle of the loaves holds a central place in the fulfillment of Jesus’ mission because it is a miracle that can be duplicated very easily by his followers. It is a miracle that does not require a disciple to have, as it were, “special” or divine powers. As the disciples were to find out, it is a miracle that only requires one to trust in the Lord and to have a generous and gratuitous spirit.
Jesus had spent the entire day teaching the people and as evening drew close, the disciples, out of concern, approached Jesus asking him to release the crowd so that the people could get themselves some food. It was a genuine concern from the disciples since hunger would render pointless the work of preaching the good news and curing the sick that Jesus had been doing since morning. The good news that Jesus came preaching included the hungry having their fill (cf. Luke 1:53, 4:18-19). Hunger was considered evil in the society of Jesus just as it is in our society today. No one was supposed to lack food. The begging of food was considered a legal right, and even the impressive Temple in Jerusalem had a section reserved for the poor. And because food was considered such an inalienable right, laws were put in place to ensure that the wealthy contributed to the feeding of the poor (cf. Leviticus 23:22- ‘ When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the LORD your God’).
In offering to feed the crowd instead of dismissing them as his disciples had suggested, Jesus accomplished two things: on the one hand, Jesus was essentially telling his disciples that feeding the people was part of his mission; secondly and most importantly, Jesus was inviting the disciples into the new era by telling them,  this is how it is done, guys (all the three synoptic Gospels report that Jesus asked the disciples to feed the crowd themselves [cf. Mark 6:37; Luke 9:13]). While the intention of Jesus might not have been to put the disciples on the spotlight as such, he wanted them to realize and understand what their mission was all about. The good news whose agents they had become had to be concretized and felt by the people. It was not good news if the lives of the people remained untouched. What they had taken up as their ministry was poised to remain mere words if the poor continued to go hungry. As St. James would later ask, “suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food [and] one of you tells him, “Go in peace; stay warm and well fed,” but does not provide for his physical needs, what good is that?” 
By offering to provide food for the multitude, Jesus was giving an example and a challenge to the disciples and to the crowd. Unlike the disciples who chose to focus on the paucity of what they had ( five loaves and two fish is what we have), Jesus focused on what they had ( bring them here to me). Jesus was confident that he who had provided the five loaves and the two fish would not fail to provide for the crowd. He trusted in the loving providence of the Lord (Response to the Psalm:  the hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs). Instead of looking at the little that was before him, Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and blessed the Lord for providing the five loaves and the two fish. After blessing the Lord, he invited the disciples to have the crowd share upon that which he had blessed. From the little that was before them, the each man, woman, and child had his/her fill. The challenge had been passed on to the disciples and to the crowd. It was not upon them to share God’s blessings with the entire world.