Faith Daily | 12 February 2022

PRAYER of the DAY - APBA p 535

Father of all,

who gave your only-begotten Son

to take upon himself the form of a servant

and to be obedient even to death on a cross:

give us the same mind that was in Christ Jesus,

that, sharing in his humility,

we may come to be with him in his glory;

where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

GOSPEL for the Day: Mark 8: 1-10

In those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them, 2“I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. 3If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way—and some of them have come from a great distance.” 4His disciples replied, “How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?” 5He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” 6Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd. 7They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. 8They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. 9Now there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. 10And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.

GOSPEL REFLECTION: Neville Eckersley

In this remarkable story Jesus used the totally inadequate resources of the little disciple band to provide a good meal for the huge crowd of four thousand. And this is all done in such a matter of course manner. It is just another feeding of the crowd with almost nothing!

Jesus had done this before for the five thousand in Mark 6 :30-44, but with differences in the details as to the closeness of villages, resources and other things.

But several points stand out in this particular passage:

As in the previous event, Jesus had great compassion for his followers. He wants to make sure they are OK after being with him for three (exhausting?) days. This is reflected faithfully by Paul in Philippians 4:6 where he says to make ALL our requests known to God. The Lord’s own prayer with its appeal for “our DAILY bread” says much the same.

Of note too is the involvement of the disciples by Jesus in the feeding of the crowd. How did they feel being part of this and watching this wonder happening before their eyes? What did they learn seeing their meagre resources becoming enough for the impossible task?

Can we learn what they did in our situation?

Can we trust the God of Jesus for our needs and tasks for which we are less than adequate?

FINAL PRAYER:

We could do worse that to follow the saintly Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his favourite prayer when he was in a Nazi prison and threatened with torture and death:

“Lord, we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

Quoting 2Chronicles 20:12

Amen