Today the liturgy relates the beginning of the story of the flood and the great sadness of God in the face of the wickedness of men. God is so pained he contemplates exterminating the man he himself created.But at the same time. he thinks about a remedy: "Noah found favour in the sight of the Lord", and God instructs Noah to build the ark. This story, like others in the Old Testament, is prefigures Jesus and we see the same divine plan in it. To heal universal evil, God uses something humble and almost insignificant: a lonely man, Noah, an ark. It will be a new beginning.
It will happen for the people of Israel: among all the great nations God chooses a small people, and from it the salvation of the world will come. This nation also becomes wicked and the Lord abandons it, but preserves a small part, the kingdom of Judah. It too is led astray and God must punish it. letting the Assyrians conquer and lead them into slavery. Even among them, God finds the righteous and they will be the beginning of a new, humble people: among these few faithful people, God gives birth to his Son. And the same tactic continues, because it can be said that in the passion of Jesus everything has become evil and Jesus himself is as if submerged by universal sin, since he has taken on the sin of the world and must pay for it with death. But the heart of Jesus remains and with this "little remnant" God saves everyone and salvation is manifested with the resurrection of Christ: Jesus, the only righteous man, saves the whole world. This is how God acts.
In the Gospel, there is an allusion to this divine strategy. The Apostles are restless because they think they do not have enough bread. Jesus reproaches them: "Do you still not perceive or understand?". God does not need material abundance to do what he wants: when there is almost nothing, God can bring about our salvation. "Don't you remember when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand…?". They must understand that it is not having much that matters, but having with them "the bread of God", which is Jesus himself.
In the history of the Church. it is the same thing: great works begin in humility. God draws great fruits from insignificance of people. We ask the Lord to make us capable of accepting sacrifices in our lives, in order to remain with him and to keep within us, Jesus the Bread.