From: Mark 6:34-44
First Miracles of the Loaves
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Commentary:
34. Our Lord had planned a period of rest, for himself and his disciples, from
the pressures of the apostolate (Mk 6:31-32). And he has to change his plans
because so many people come, eager to hear him speak. Not only is he not an-
noyed with them: he feels compassion on seeing their spiritual need. “My peo-
ple are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hos 4:6). They need instruction and
our Lord wants to meet this need by preaching to them. “Jesus is moved by hun-
ger and sorrow, but what moves him most is ignorance” (St. J. Escriva, “Christ
Is Passing By”, 109).
37. A denarius was what an artisan earned for a normal day’s work. The disci-
ples must, therefore, have thought it little less than impossible to fulfill the Mas-
ter’s command, because they would not have had this much money.
41. This miracle is a figure of the Holy Eucharist: Christ performed it shortly be-
fore promising that sacrament (cf. Jn 6:1ff), and the Fathers have always so in-
terpreted it. In this miracle Jesus shows his supernatural power and his love for
men — the same power and love as make it possible for Christ’s one and only
body to be present in the eucharistic species to nourish the faithful down the
centuries. In the words of the sequence composed by St Thomas Aquinas for
the Mass of Corpus Christi : “Sumit unus, sumunt mille, quantum isti, tantum
ille, nec sumptus consumitur” (Be one or be a thousand fed, they eat alike that
living bread which, still received, ne’er wastes away).
This gesture of our Lord-looking up to heaven — is recalled in the Roman canon
of the Mass : “Et elevatis oculis in caelum, ad Te Deum Patrem suum omnipo-
tentem”(and looking up to heaven, to you, his almighty Father). At this point in
the Mass we are preparing to be present at a miracle greater than that of the
multiplication of the loaves — the changing of bread into his own body, offered
as food for men.
42. Christ wanted the left-overs to be collected (cf. Jn 6:12) to teach us not to
waste things God gives us, and also to have them as a tangible proof of the
miracle.
The collecting of the left-overs is a way of showing us the value of little things
done out of love for God — orderliness, cleanliness, finishing things completely.
It also reminds the sensitive believer of the extreme care that must be taken of
the eucharistic species. Also, the generous scale of the miracle is an expres-
sion of the largesse of the messianic times. The Fathers recall that Moses dis-
tributed the manna for each to eat as much as he needed but some left part of
it for the next day and it bred worms (Ex 16:16-20). Elijah gave the widow just
enough to meet her needs (1 Kings 17:13-16). Jesus, on the other hand, gives
generously and abundantly.
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
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