Late in the day, with crowds following Him into a desert place, the disciples urged Christ to send the people away to find food. He answered: 'You give them something to eat.' Andrew brought a boy with five barley loaves and two small fish, asking, 'But what are these among so many?'
Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and broke them — the same fourfold action He would use at the Last Supper. The people sat in groups of fifty and a hundred on the green grass; all ate and were satisfied. The disciples gathered twelve baskets of fragments. John's Gospel makes the connection to the Eucharist explicit (John 6) — the very next day Christ preached the Bread of Life discourse from this sign.