The daily Word of God

febrero 10, 2024

St Scholastica, Virgin

Mark 8:1–10. They ate as much as they wanted.

Reading 1: 1 Kgs12:26-32; 13:33-34

Jeroboam thought to himself:
"The kingdom will return to David's house.
If now this people go up to offer sacrifices
in the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem,
the hearts of this people will return to their master,
Rehoboam, king of Judah,
and they will kill me."
After taking counsel, the king made two calves of gold
and said to the people:
"You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough.
Here is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt."
And he put one in Bethel, the other in Dan.
This led to sin, because the people frequented those calves
in Bethel and in Dan.
He also built temples on the high places
and made priests from among the people who were not Levites.
Jeroboam established a feast in the eighth month
on the fifteenth day of the month
to duplicate in Bethel the pilgrimage feast of Judah,
with sacrifices to the calves he had made;
and he stationed in Bethel priests of the high places he had built.
Jeroboam did not give up his evil ways after this,
but again made priests for the high places
from among the common people.
Whoever desired it was consecrated
and became a priest of the high places.
This was a sin on the part of the house of Jeroboam
for which it was to be cut off and destroyed from the earth.

Responsorial Psalm PS 106:6-7ab, 19-20, 21-22

(4a) Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

We have sinned, we and our fathers;
we have committed crimes; we have done wrong.
Our fathers in Egypt
considered not your wonders.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

They made a calf in Horeb
and adored a molten image;
They exchanged their glory
for the image of a grass-eating bullock.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

They forgot the God who had saved them,
who had done great deeds in Egypt,
Wondrous deeds in the land of Ham,
terrible things at the Red Sea.

R. Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.

Gospel Mk 8:1-10

In those days when there again was a great crowd without anything to eat,
Jesus summoned the disciples and said,
“My heart is moved with pity for the crowd,
because they have been with me now for three days
and have nothing to eat.
If I send them away hungry to their homes,
they will collapse on the way,
and some of them have come a great distance.”
His disciples answered him, “Where can anyone get enough bread
to satisfy them here in this deserted place?”
Still he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?”
They replied, “Seven.”
He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground.
Then, taking the seven loaves he gave thanks, broke them,
and gave them to his disciples to distribute,
and they distributed them to the crowd.
They also had a few fish.
He said the blessing over them
and ordered them distributed also.
They ate and were satisfied.
They picked up the fragments left over–seven baskets.
There were about four thousand people.

He dismissed the crowd and got into the boat with his disciples
and came to the region of Dalmanutha.

Be protagonists of change

For a present-day reader of the gospel, the behaviour of those four thousand people would seem absurd. They left their homes to follow a preacher, even ignoring their basic needs. They chose to remain close to Christ, and he was “moved with pity”, because they were hungry.

Two miraculous feedings are mentioned in Mark within three chapters, the first one in chapter six. In the first feeding, the crowd was mostly Jewish. There, Jesus was immersed in preaching, and the disciples alerted him to the physical needs of the people. In the second, it was on the “other side” populated mostly by pagans. Here it is Jesus who becomes concerned about people going hungry and alerts the disciples who don’t seem very interested and bring up excuses.

When it comes to being Church, if we limit ourselves to ministering only to Christians, Jesus keeps shaking us awake to the everyday needs of those on the other side as wall—for everyone matters.

Jesus had the power to fix the problem of hunger. But he didn’t fix it himself but invited disciples to be missionaries to feed the hungry. “How many loaves do you have?” is the question. Today, Jesus asks us as well. No matter how insignificant or little it is, what we have is enough for God, provided we are willing to share.

In the Apostolic Exhortation Christus Vivit #174, Pope Francis appeals to the youth of the world: “Please, do not leave it to others to be protagonists of change. You are the ones who hold the future! Jesus was not a bystander. He got involved. Don’t stand aloof, but immerse yourselves in the reality of life, as Jesus did. …fight for the common good, serve the poor, be protagonists of the revolution of charity and service, capable of resisting the pathologies of consumerism and superficial individualism.” 

bibleclaret