Tuesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time
Mark 8:14-21
“How is it that you do not yet understand?”
And they forgot to take bread. And they did not have any with them in the boat, except one loaf. And he instructed them, saying: “Consider and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod.”
And they discussed this with one another, saying, “For we have no bread.” And Jesus, knowing this, said to them: “Why do you consider that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet know or understand? Do you still have blindness in your heart? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear?
Do you not remember, when I broke the five loves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments you took up?” They said to him, “Twelve.”
“And when the seven loaves were among the four thousand, how many baskets of fragments did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.”
And he said to them, “How is it that you do not yet understand?”
What do the Fathers say?
The Venerable BEDE. Some may ask, how they had no bread, when they had filled seven baskets just before they embarked in the ship. But Scripture relates that they had forgotten to take them with them, which is a proof how little care they had for the flesh in other things, since in their eagerness to follow the Lord, even the necessity of refreshing their bodies had escaped from their mind.
St THEOPHYLACT. He means by leaven their hurtful and corrupt doctrine, full of the old malice, for the Herodians were the teachers, who said that Herod was the Christ.
The Venerable BEDE. Or the leaven of the Pharisees is making the decrees of the divine law inferior to the traditions of men, preaching the law in word, attacking it in deed, tempting the Lord, and disbelieving His doctrine and His works; but the leaven of Herod is adultery, murder, rash swearing, a pretence of religion, hatred to Christ and His forerunner.
St THEOPHYLACT. And they reasoned amongst themselves, saying, it is because we have no bread; and this they said, as not understanding the power of Christ, who could make bread out of nothing.