Mark 8:14-21, the Gospel
at Mass on Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Ordinary Time
Yesterday in the Gospel, we saw that some group of Pharisees
seemed to have missed out on seeing Christ make food come out of thin air for
crowds of thousands on two different days.
So those Pharisees argued with him demanding from him a sign from heaven.
He would not do it for them.
He would not do a miracle to slap them into believing.
But in today’s Gospel even his disciples who saw him work the
signs from heaven, his disciples did not get what his teaching and wondrous
works meant.
Twice they had seen him give crowds of thousands not only ENOUGH
food but TOO MUCH.
He wants his disciples to understand the TOO MUCH.
He has them tell from memory just how many baskets of overflowing
leftovers they picked up each time he made bread for thousands come out of thin
air— come out of heaven.
Those heaps of leftovers were not unforeseen.
Christ knows what he is doing.
What he gives and who he is go far beyond meeting merely our
earthly needs.
He knows and will deal with our needs and hardships, our lack of
both wisdom and foresight, our woes and wounds.
Yet he wants more than to fill out and fill up earthly well-being.
Christ wants us to open up to something greater than earthly
well-being.
Here we are celebrating him in his Eucharist, where he is the
Living Bread from Heaven.
He wants us to plan with him on taking from here full basket after
full basket of far more than our own earthly worries about ourselves.
Such worries must die with him on the cross if we are to be his
disciples.
To live, die, rise and live for the glory of God and for our
salvation is the leaven that no
number of baskets could begin to hold.
