1 John 4:7-10 / Mark 6:34-44
In the religious sense, sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or livestock to God or the gods as an act of propitiation or worship.
While sacrifice often implies ritual killing, the term offering (oblation) can be used for bloodless sacrifices of cereal food or artefacts. For offerings of liquids or beverage by pouring, the term libation is used.
Sacrifice is the central form of worship in any religion. It is offered for many reasons: thanksgiving; supplication; appeasement;
Usually it is the people or the devotees who makes the sacrifice before the deity and not the other way round.
Yet in Christianity, it is the other way round, and the 1st reading makes an emphasis of it.
God's love for us was revealed when God sent into the world His only Son so that we could have life through Him.
So it is not our love for God but God's love for us is proclaimed when He sent His Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.
That is the foundation of Christianity and that is also the direction that we Christians must take in order to live out our faith.
Yet it must also be known that whenever we offer a sacrifice to God we will never be left wanting or in need.
As we heard in the gospel, out of the five loaves and two fish, five thousand hungry people were fed and there were leftovers.
Indeed, since God has sacrificed His only Son to save us from our sins, what is there that we cannot offer to God?
So let us make our sacrifices lovingly and joyfully, for in the end, it is us who will be filled