Okay, God. I can dig it.
Also, apparently one of my regular readers did not realize that only the introduction , and that you do in fact have to click "Read More". If you're reading this, you've been missing out friend.
"When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them,
for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
By now it was already late and his disciples approached him and said, 'This is a deserted place and it is already very late. Dismiss them so that they can go into the surrounding farms and villages and buy themselves something to eat.
He said to them in reply, 'Give them some food yourselves.'
But they said to him, 'Are we to buy two hundred days' wages worth of food and give it to them to eat?'
He asked them, 'How many loaves do you have? Go and see.'
And when they had found out, they said 'Five loaves and two fish.'
So he gave orders to have them sit in groups on the green grass.
The people took their places in rows by hundreds and by fifties.
Then, taking the five loaves and two fish and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; he also divided the two fish among them all.
They all ate and were satisfied.
And they picked up twelve wicker baskets full of fragments and what was left of the fish.
Those who ate of the loaves were five thousand men." - Mark 6:34-44
Okay. This is a big one. Of all the miracles found in the gospels, this is probably one of the most famous. It's so famous, it's one of only two miracles to appear in all four gospels. So we know it's big. If you were curious, the other one was his own Resurrection. Yeah, this is a big one.
And, like any Bible passage, its depths can never be fully explored, its riches never exhausted. I'd like to point out two different ways of looking at this text: symbolically (that is, examining the symbols throughout), and prefiguratively (seeing it as a prediction/foreshadowing/type of something to follow - in this case, the Mass).
The first thing we can notice about this passage is its curious beginning. So far, Jesus has been going around healing and exorcising and performing great works, and a following has developed. In fact, Mark calls them "vast crowds" (34) first and foremost, only adding the "5000 men" at the end. It's worth keeping in mind, though, that this count was only men, and didn't account for women and children. So, yeah..there were a lot of people there.
For now I'm going to ignore the whole "sheep without a shepherd" bit, firstly because that's a whole other topic, and secondly because it's-my-blog-and-I-can-do-what-I-want, that's why.
Now Jesus was teaching them, because that's the Jesus-y thing to do, and everybody was getting kind of hungry. It was late, and they were pretty far from civilization. The apostles were not oblivious. They recognized the crowd's hunger. So, in much the same way we pray for the hungry and poor, the apostles asked Jesus to help them out by dismissing them. Jesus' reply is one of those ones that really applies to us today. He says, "Give them some food yourselves." They prayed, but Jesus made it clear that just saying a quick prayer is not enough. We must always supplement our prayer with action.
We see in the Letter of James, "If a brother or a sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm and eat well,' but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?" (James 2:15-16).
The apostles were understandably a bit worried about this: it would cost a lot of money to feed all these people. So when Jesus said "Give them some food yourselves", they were quick to point out the cost. But Jesus wasn't asking them to go buy what they didn't have...he was asking them to share what they already did have.
Similarly, Jesus doesn't ask us to necessarily go out after things we don't have, but to use what we already have with others.
How many of us carry around some form of food with us? Nothing major, just a tiny snack or so? I would say at least 9/10 mothers have a Ziploc bag with goldfish crackers or fruit snacks or something. Likewise, most people back in the day would have had something on them. A small piece of bread, maybe. But they all hid it at first, if they did. Only the apostles shared what they had - five loaves and two fish.
Maybe, just maybe, everybody else saw the generosity of the apostles...they saw them giving what little they had...and were inspired. Maybe the realest miracle wasn't a culinary "unlimited ammo" cheat code, but a few regular guys serving as an example to a few thousand.
How could that work, you might ask? Because of Jesus (as if that wasn't already the answer to everything). Jesus saw what little they had, and blessed it. He took whatever the apostles brought and magnified it. Similarly, if we give what little we have to Christ, he will "multiply" it and we will feed thousands with it.
Because let's be honest - on our own we don't have very much. But when we give everything to God, he returns it tenfold. We give Him a little love, he hits us with even more. We give everything, we get even more. We "eat, and are satisfied."
If we look at this passage in context of the rest of Mark and the gospels, we can go even deeper. Just two chapters later in Mark, we find the story of Jesus feeding the four thousand by multiplying loaves and fish. "But wait," you might ask if you were rude, "Jesus just fed the five thousand! Did Mark forget that he wrote that already!? What gives!?"
Well, highly impatient person, Jesus performed this miracle twice. So for clarity, let's take a look at what (if anything) significant is in between the two. It is at the end of Chapter 6 that we find the Walking on Water. The apostles were in the middle of sailing across the Sea of Galilee when they encountered Jesus walking on the water.
Here's where some basic geography gets involved. The Nazareth side of the Sea (where Jesus fed the 5000) was primarily Jewish. The Gennesaret side (where Jesus fed the 4000 after that) was mostly Gentile. What could Jesus be saying by feeding both the Jews and the Gentiles? He came to proclaim the truth that he came to save the entire world. "Slave and free, woman and man, Gentile and Jew." He came for everybody.
So, what can we take away from all this? It's our job to feed the hungry. We must "give them something to eat" ourselves. But we don't have to do it alone, because Jesus takes what we have and multiplies it.
So today, give everything you have. Even if you don't think it's that much, give it to God. Whether you have five loaves or fifty, give them to God. He will bless you and fill you. You will eat, and be satisfied.
We see in the Letter of James, "If a brother or a sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, keep warm and eat well,' but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?" (James 2:15-16).
The apostles were understandably a bit worried about this: it would cost a lot of money to feed all these people. So when Jesus said "Give them some food yourselves", they were quick to point out the cost. But Jesus wasn't asking them to go buy what they didn't have...he was asking them to share what they already did have.
Similarly, Jesus doesn't ask us to necessarily go out after things we don't have, but to use what we already have with others.
How many of us carry around some form of food with us? Nothing major, just a tiny snack or so? I would say at least 9/10 mothers have a Ziploc bag with goldfish crackers or fruit snacks or something. Likewise, most people back in the day would have had something on them. A small piece of bread, maybe. But they all hid it at first, if they did. Only the apostles shared what they had - five loaves and two fish.
Maybe, just maybe, everybody else saw the generosity of the apostles...they saw them giving what little they had...and were inspired. Maybe the realest miracle wasn't a culinary "unlimited ammo" cheat code, but a few regular guys serving as an example to a few thousand.
How could that work, you might ask? Because of Jesus (as if that wasn't already the answer to everything). Jesus saw what little they had, and blessed it. He took whatever the apostles brought and magnified it. Similarly, if we give what little we have to Christ, he will "multiply" it and we will feed thousands with it.
Because let's be honest - on our own we don't have very much. But when we give everything to God, he returns it tenfold. We give Him a little love, he hits us with even more. We give everything, we get even more. We "eat, and are satisfied."
If we look at this passage in context of the rest of Mark and the gospels, we can go even deeper. Just two chapters later in Mark, we find the story of Jesus feeding the four thousand by multiplying loaves and fish. "But wait," you might ask if you were rude, "Jesus just fed the five thousand! Did Mark forget that he wrote that already!? What gives!?"
Well, highly impatient person, Jesus performed this miracle twice. So for clarity, let's take a look at what (if anything) significant is in between the two. It is at the end of Chapter 6 that we find the Walking on Water. The apostles were in the middle of sailing across the Sea of Galilee when they encountered Jesus walking on the water.
Here's where some basic geography gets involved. The Nazareth side of the Sea (where Jesus fed the 5000) was primarily Jewish. The Gennesaret side (where Jesus fed the 4000 after that) was mostly Gentile. What could Jesus be saying by feeding both the Jews and the Gentiles? He came to proclaim the truth that he came to save the entire world. "Slave and free, woman and man, Gentile and Jew." He came for everybody.
So, what can we take away from all this? It's our job to feed the hungry. We must "give them something to eat" ourselves. But we don't have to do it alone, because Jesus takes what we have and multiplies it.
So today, give everything you have. Even if you don't think it's that much, give it to God. Whether you have five loaves or fifty, give them to God. He will bless you and fill you. You will eat, and be satisfied.
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