“HE FEEDS”
Saint Mark 8. 1-9
The Seventh Sunday after Trinity: 10 July Anno Domini 2005
Fr Watson
There's a reason you need to eat more than once a day; hunger. There's a reason for hunger; sin. Before Adam's treachery food was for enjoyment, and conviviality. Now you eat because if you don't you'll die.
Because you have sinful natures, you become sated, jaded, bored and ungrateful. Even in this land of plenty, of abundance, of excess, you grumble over your choice of food. You complain it's too boring, fatty, cold, stale, salty, tasteless, and greasy. You complain that it takes too long to prepare, that it's too repetitious or unhealthy. But then, if you don't get your three "squares" a day, plus your entitled "snacks," you complain that you're "starving." We are a spoiled lot; just like Adam and his.
You take food into your body to live. Your body, made by the Lord, breaks down the foodstuffs into the essential components that your body needs to live off of. The food is the very fuel that keeps you alive; the wood that stokes the fire of existence; that warms the temple hearth.
The Lord feeds you and all the rest of His children, including the prodigals. He feeds the believing lambs and also the traitorous goats and wolves. He allows the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, for in reality, all are unjust. He provides you with your food. He provides you with all that you need for this life. He gives you your "daily" bread; and that turns out to be your daily "everything."
The "Feeding of the Four Thousand," the second time the Christ multiplies fish and bread to feed a multitude is a great miracle indeed. Only the Creator can make the universe out of nothing, and only the Creator can make that which is small and insignificant into a cornucopia of overflowing sustenance. Only Jesus can take a dead and worthless enemy and make it into a living, valuable brother!
He takes your devil-encrusted corpse and scrapes, bathes, scrubs, cleans away all the sin +. He breathes life into you and makes you his New Creation. He multiplies His Grace in you. He multiplies His works and gifts in you. He multiplies His family from one, Adam, into the sand of the seashore. He multiplies His children from one, Abram, into the stars of the heavens. He multiplies! He multiplies seven loaves of bread to feed thousands. He multiplies a few fish to nourish all those whom He has gathered to Himself. It actually happened, but it's so much more!
It's all a picture, a "type" a prognostication of how Jesus feeds you. He feeds you foodstuffs yes, but He also feeds you Himself; that would be love and life--strength and eternity.
Why were there seven loaves of bread? Why was that specific number mentioned? Seven, a fixed stationary limited number is transformed by the Lord of Creation, Who is also the Lord of Redemption, transformed by His Word into the eternal limitless overflowing number eight. Even as Seven is the number of the first days of Creation, Monday through Saturday, the Lord began mans everlasting journey of communion with God on the Eighth Day. Eight is everlasting; it never runs out, it is God's constant perpetual motion of care. Today, June 10th, is the eternal Eighth Day--Sunday, the Lord's Day. Jesus obeyed the Will of the Father perfectly, obeyed all the Commandments, fulfilled the will of God and thus satisfied the creatures' duty of love. Jesus left the mount where He fed the multitudes so that He might go to the mount where He could give His very body, the real bread of heaven, unto death, in order to really feed the multitudes. His true Body and Blood on altars all over the world this very Eighth Day. You are fed His love and His Life and His Righteousness.
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost