Saturday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 10, 2024

Mark 8, 1-10

In those days when there again was a great crowd without anything to eat, Jesus summoned the disciples and said, “My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will collapse on the way, and some of them have come a great distance.” His disciples answered him, “Where can anyone get enough bread to satisfy them here in this deserted place?” Still he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They replied, “Seven.” He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground. Then, taking the seven loaves he gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to distribute, and they distributed them to the crowd. They also had a few fish. He said the blessing over them and ordered them distributed also. They ate and were satisfied. They picked up the fragments left over–seven baskets. There were about four thousand people.  He dismissed the crowd and got into the boat with his disciples and came to the region of Dalmanutha.

“In those days.”  Presumably St. Mark means here in the days after the Lord returned to Galilee from his lengthy tour of the Gentile lands neighboring Israel.  Mark is not as loose with the chronology as St. Matthew is, the latter showing a preference for grouping the Lord’s teachings and miracles according to theme over strict chronology, but he is not as committed to it as St. Luke and St. John in their Gospels.  He does, however, provide a streamlined account of the Lord’s final months, especially in his last journey to Jerusalem.  The feeding of the four thousand occurs in those months but as a preliminary to his journey.  Understanding this helps us to see the deeper meaning of the Gospel Reading.

“There again was a great crowd without anything to eat.”  The Gospels tell us of two occasions on which Jesus miraculously provided food for those who came into the wilderness to hear him.  On the first occasion he fed five thousand.  Many scholars think that these are actually one occasion but two versions of the event circulated and the Evangelists felt the need to include both.  However, the details of the two show that these are two distinct events.  In addition, St. Mark will emphasize this fact by recording Jesus as questioning his Apostles about the two separate miracles: “ ‘When I broke the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took you up?’ They said to him: ‘Twelve.’ ‘And when [I broke] the seven loaves among four thousand, how many baskets of fragments took you up’ And they said to him: ‘Seven.’ ” (Mark 8, 19-20).  The two feedings do seem to have occurred within a short time of each other since Mark uses the phrase “there again”, as though no other notable event had occurred between the two.

“My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will collapse on the way, and some of them have come a great distance.”  Jesus summons his Apostles to him as though to indicate what he means to do for them and also as though to teach them that they should also feel this compassion for those who will one day come to them to learn about the Gospel.  The bread and fish Jesus will use here signify the teachings of God with which the Apostles will feed their own crowds.  Jesus is saying to them that if he sends them away, as though he considers he has nothing to give them, they will perish.  Similarly, if the Apostles do not rightly value the Gospel, people will come to them to hear, they will refuse them, perhaps out of weariness or impatience, and the people will die in their sins.  “Some of them have come a great distance.”  That is, they have lived lives steeped in sin but have come at the prompting of the Holy Spirit to learn about their Savior.

“Where can anyone get enough bread to satisfy them here in this deserted place?”  According to the spiritual sense we can understand this as the Apostles wondering about their abilities to teach the crowds who will come to them.  They hesitate between trusting in their own frail abilities and in the help the Lord will readily provide them.  “How many loaves do you have?”  Jesus wants the Apostles to understand and recognize their weakness so that when the people are filled they will know that it was the Lord’s doing.  They tell him they have seven loaves, pathetically insufficient in their eyes but plenty for the Lord to work through. “Then, taking the seven loaves he gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to distribute, and they distributed them to the crowd.”  We note that the Lord could have distributed the food himself but he wants to show the Apostles how he works through them.  He also glorified himself more wonderfully in this way, for it is a greater achievement to work successfully through assistants than by accomplishing something alone.  We think of a magician who has members of his audience follow his instructions on cutting the cards or engaging with some other prop.  He himself never touches anything.  He acts as though from afar.

“They ate and were satisfied.”  In the spiritual sense we can understand that each person who came to hear the word of God receives it according to his capacity for doing so and can then ruminate on what he has heard and live it faithfully.  “They picked up the fragments left over — thirty-seven baskets.”  The number of baskets of leftover fragments is given  to show that the Lord never gives only so much, or just enough, but always abundantly.  It explains why the Lord died on the Cross in the midst of such immense suffering when he could have saved us at much lesser cost to himself.  The Fathers proposed all sorts of reasons for the exact number, thirty-seven, but it simply seems to show the accuracy of the account.  If Mark had meant to make a particular point of his own here, he could have changed the number to forty, the number of days of the Flood which wiped away the sinfulness of the first humans so as to point to the people leaving their sins behind after being spiritually fed by Jesus.

“There were about four thousand people.  He dismissed the crowd and got into the boat with his disciples and came to the region of Dalmanutha.”  It was a sizable crowd to gather outside a town.  Their coming to Jesus in the wilderness without provisions for themselves shows that when they heard he was nearby, they dropped everything and went directly to where they heard he was.  This is also a lesson for us.