Tuesday in the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time, February 15, 2022

I’m doing a little better today.  I do appreciate and benefit from your prayers.  I don’t think I coughed today, but any activity is debilitating.

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 disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.”  In the verses just prior to those of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus and his Apostles had headed in their boat for Dalmanutha, a now lost town on the coast of the Sea of Galilee.  There he encountered hostile Pharisees who demanded that he perform a sign for them.  After refusing to do so, Jesus got back in the boat and made their way to Cesarea Philippi .  The stay in Dalmanutha seems to have been cut short, and this may account for the Apostles not having bought bread there.  The detail about the bread gives us an interesting insight into life with Jesus: that some of the Apostles were charged with refilling their sack of provisions that they might eat wherever they wound up.  From Mark 8, 7, we see that besides bread, they carried dried fish with them.  

“Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”  Jesus continued to teach his Apostles even on the sea when he could have rested, such was his zeal for souls.  His teaching here about the 

“leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” seems random to us, and evidently it did to the Apostles, for they connected it at once with their low supply of bread.  Of course, the Lord knew what he was going to do and that his main teaching to them would be about trust in him, but we might ponder what the original teaching meant.  What was this “leaven” of the Pharisees and of Herod?  We already have heard that members of these two parties or sects had begun plotting to put him to death, but the Lord does not seem to reference that in this case.  In Matthew 16, 6, St. Matthew recalls the Lord as having also spoken of the “leaven of the Sadducees”, whom the Lord does not encounter until his last week on earth, from the evidence of the Gospels.  These groups had their places in society at that time, and each had its rich backers, admirers, and influence.  There may have been moments when the Apostles, who lived and ate on the road and were derided by those in power and influence, wondered why the Lord did not live as these men did, in their big houses filled with servants.  Why did their own life have to be so hard?  This may be the leaven of which the Lord warned them, the tiny doubts and temptations that would lead them away from Christ and the Gospel to a worldly respectability.

“Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend?”  The Lord upbraids them not because they lacked bread but because they did not realize who he was so that they had no need to worry about food.  They had seen him expel demons, declare himself himself to be “the Lord of the Sabbath”, raise the dead, and show himself to be the master of storms.  In addition, he had shown them how he could feed thousands: “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?”  The Lord shows his displeasure with their lack of insight and of faith: “Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear? . . . Do you still not understand?”  By doing this, he forces his Apostles to think about who he is, and very soon after reaching Cesarea Philippi he will ask them straight out for their conclusions.

No Herodians or Pharisees swagger about in our lives today, but we may be tempted by what we see of the lifestyles of those purely secular folks who seem to have it “all”.  We must be careful not to try to fit in with them lest we lose Jesus Christ, who truly is our “all”.