Tuesday in the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, February 16, 2021

Mark 8:14-21

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” They concluded among themselves that it was because they had no bread. When he became aware of this he said to them, “Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?” They answered him, “Twelve.” “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?” They answered him, “Seven.” He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

The Gospel reading for today’s Mass follows directly that of yesterday’s.  The Lord had sailed to a place called Dalmanutha, had preached there, and then had been confronted by Pharisees who desired him to produce a sign from heaven.  After declaring that they would not be given such a sign, he got back into the boat and he had and the Apostles sailed away again.

While still in the boat on the Sea of Galilee the Apostles make an account of their supplies and find that they have but one loaf of bread remaining.  This loaf may have come with them from the recent feeding of the five thousand people a couple of days before.  The Apostles may have planned to buy bread in Dalmanutha but the abrupt departure meant scrambling to get back aboard the boat.  After a bit of sailing, the Lord said to his followers, “Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”  Between the sound of the wind, the noise of the water, and the elongated shape of the boat, Jesus probably had to shout for the Apostles to hear him, and they may have interpreted his words as a reproach from their tone.  The lack of bread had bothered them.  A disciple always wants to appear at his or her best before the teacher.  They had not been prepared with enough food even for themselves at the recent feeding of the enormous crowd.  They had taken his words to them on that occasion as a rebuke, even as sarcasm: “You give them something to eat.”  His speaking now seemed to them his contempt for their failure.

“Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend?”  The Lord, who could feed five thousand people could just as easily feed twelve besides himself, had other things on his mind, and for him, the threat of the “leaven” of the Pharisees and that of Herod far outweighed that of hunger: “Do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”  

St. Mark does not enlighten us with whether the Lord explained his warning about the “leaven” of the Pharisees and that of Herod, but we can infer a few things by looking at the very brief Parable of the the Leaven, in Luke 13, 20-21: “And again he said: To what shall I liken the kingdom of God ?  It is like to leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”  Leaven, such as yeast, is composed of incredibly tiny bits of fungus which can cause fermentation.  The particles are very fine, like powder.  Only a very small amount is necessary in making bread.  In the parable, the woman uses a pinch or two of the stuff and kneads it into the dough.  It disappears at once, and she would continue kneading until it was fairly evenly spread throughout the loaf.  Left for a time, the bread would “rise” and then be ready for baking.  In ancient times, no one knew for sure how it worked.  So the Lord is speaking of something small, almost unnoticeable, that entered a person and grew up inside until the person was consumed with it.  Doubt can work that way.  We can even speak of the “seeds” of doubt, scattered here and there, which mature into the weed of apostasy.  The Lord knows well that the faith of the Apostles is newborn and weak, needing constant nourishment and attention.  At the same time, they are surrounded by the dangers of indifferentism, cynicism, and hostility to anything new.  He warns his Apostles not to pay attention to the Pharisees who are unable to understand any interpretation of the Scriptures other than theirs as anything but heresy; and the Herodians, many of whom regarded King Herod as the messiah and the future leader of a Jewish kingdom independent of Rome.  He himself belongs to neither party, nor, obviously, to the Sadducees.  He is something far greater.

Despite their tender faith, in a short time from that point one of them will declare Jesus to be “the Christ”.

We must also guard our minds from the voices around us that condemn and mock religion, both crudely and under the guise of a certain sophistication.  We fortify ourselves with books and talks on Catholic doctrine, the study of apologetics, with the Holy Scriptures, and, above all else, with prayer.  The voice of the Lord in prayer drowns out all the others, even those of the wind and the sea.