February 15, 2025
Saturday of the Fifth Week in
Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 334
Reading 1
The LORD God called to Adam and asked him, "Where are
you?"
He answered, "I heard you in the garden;
but I was afraid, because I was naked,
so I hid myself."
Then he asked, "Who told you that you were naked?
You have eaten, then,
from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!"
The man replied, "The woman whom you put here with me—
she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it."
The LORD God then asked the woman,
"Why did you do such a thing?"
The woman answered, "The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it."
Then the LORD God said to the serpent:
"Because you have done this, you shall be banned
from all the animals
and from all the wild creatures;
On your belly shall you crawl,
and dirt shall you eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
He will strike at your head,
while you strike at his heel."
To the woman he said:
"I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing;
in pain shall you bring forth children.
Yet your urge shall be for your husband,
and he shall be your master."
To the man he said: "Because you listened to your wife
and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat,
"Cursed be the ground because of you!
In toil shall you eat its yield
all the days of your life.
Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you,
as you eat of the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
shall you get bread to eat,
Until you return to the ground,
from which you were taken;
For you are dirt,
and to dirt you shall return."
The man called his wife Eve,
because she became the mother of all the living.
For the man and his wife the LORD God made leather garments,
with which he clothed them.
Then the LORD God said: "See! The man has become like one of us,
knowing what is good and what is evil!
Therefore, he must not be allowed to put out his hand
to take fruit from the tree of life also,
and thus eat of it and live forever."
The LORD God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden,
to till the ground from which he had been taken.
When he expelled the man,
he settled him east of the garden of Eden;
and he stationed the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword,
to guard the way to the tree of life.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
90:2, 3-4abc, 5-6, 12-13
R. (1) In every age, O Lord, you have been our
refuge.
Before the mountains were begotten
and the earth and the world were brought forth,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
R. In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.
You turn man back to dust,
saying, "Return, O children of men."
For a thousand years in your sight
are as yesterday, now that it is past,
or as a watch of the night.
R. In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.
You make an end of them in their sleep;
the next morning they are like the changing grass,
Which at dawn springs up anew,
but by evening wilts and fades.
R. In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.
Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
R. In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
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.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021525.cfm
Commentary on
Genesis 3:9-24
The Man and the Woman now experience the results of their
disobedience to God. It begins with a lovely, but sad dialogue between God and
the Man and the Woman. God is looking for them in the Garden, asking “Where are
you?” God, of course, knows where they are, but he needs to elicit the
confession of their sin. The Man says they are hiding because they are naked.
Nakedness now fills them with a sense of shame and guilt. They can no longer
face their God. Their original innocence is gone, and from now on nakedness is
linked to immorality and base desires.
God asks the Man:
Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the
tree of which I commanded you not to eat?
God now interrogates the Man, who blames the Woman, who
blames the serpent. God’s judgements, however, are pronounced in the reverse
order. What follows provides explanations for the origin of some present-day
realities: agriculture, prepared or cooked food, childbearing, family of
husband and wife.
We now see a pathetic shifting of responsibility to someone
else. First, the Man blames the Woman—the “woman whom you gave to be with
me”—even God is being held partly to blame! “Yes, I ate the fruit, but she made
me do it.” She, in her turn, blames the serpent for putting temptation in her
way:
The serpent tricked me, and I ate.
The Hebrew for the verb “tricked” is hiss’iani and
suggests the hissing of the snake.
All now pay the price of their wrongdoing.
The serpent
The serpent is condemned to crawl the earth, forever eating the earth,
hinting that in the original creation, the snake was once upright. He will be
cursed for ever among all the animals.
From now on, a strange enmity will exist between the Woman
and the serpent, and between her offspring and the serpent’s:
…he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.
Later theology would see here not just enmity between snakes
and humans, but the serpent is identified with Satan, whose eventual defeat
seems implied in the contrast between ‘head’ and ‘heel’. Later generations saw
in the passage the first promise of a Redeemer for sinful humanity. In that
case, the Woman’s offspring is Jesus Christ.
The New Jerusalem Bible has the following
comment:
“The Hebrew text, by proclaiming that the offspring of the
snake is henceforth at enmity with the woman’s descendants, opposes the human
race to the devil and his ‘seed’, his posterity, and hints at ultimate victory.
It is the first glimmer of salvation, the proto-evangelium or
‘pre-Gospel’.
The Greek version has a masculine pronoun (‘he’, rather than
‘it’ will bruise…), thus ascribing the victory not to the woman’s descendants
in general, but to one Son in particular, and thus providing the basis for the
messianic interpretation given by many of the Fathers. The Latin version has a
feminine pronoun (‘she’ will bruise…) and since in the messianic interpretation
of our text, the Messiah and his Mother appear together, the pronoun has been
taken to refer to Mary.” (edited)
The Woman
The Woman will experience great pain when giving birth. She will have a
strong desire for her husband, but he will ‘rule over’ her. Women’s historical
subordination to the male is presented as a consequence of human events, not an
ideal in its own right. Responsibilities of procreation will compromise the
freedom of both genders. The Man will ‘rule over’ her, but he will need her to
continue his family line.
The Man
In the garden the Man had just to pick the fruit from the trees. Now the
tilling of the unfriendly and infertile soil will become a laborious and
painful task, resulting often in brambles and thistles. From now on his life
will be one of hard physical labour, until the day he goes back to the soil
from which he was originally made. Agriculture was a major step in human
evolution, but one beset with difficulty and hard work. Unlike the abundant
fruit of the Garden just waiting to be picked, bread, for instance, requires
many steps and much human cooperation in its preparation. And at the end, the
Man will return to the earth from which he came—the first clear indication of
human mortality.
In a final touch, we are told that God made skins for the
Man and his wife to wear to cover the shame of their nakedness. Some see in
this a new alienation between humans and animals, which did not exist in the
Garden. Animals now were being killed by humans for food, clothing and other
purposes—and humans were often being killed and eaten by animals. Later, the
prophet would dream of a day when:
The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together…[i.e. Paradise regained] (Is 11:6)
At the same time, the Man and the Woman were now able, like
God, “…[to know] good and evil”. They now knew all the possible extremes, they
knew about sex, mortality and moral distinctions of good and bad, right and
wrong. There was a danger that they could reach out to the Tree of Life and win
immortality. They must be removed from the Garden and sent back to the earth
from which they had originally come. They will have to settle for the modified
immortality of succeeding family generations—a human family tree.
To the east of the Garden in Eden, cherubim and a flaming
sword were placed to keep the Man and the Woman out and away from the Tree of
Life.
Lastly, the Man now gave his wife the name of Eve, which
means “bearer of life”. She would be the mother of every person to be born in
succeeding ages. This second naming of Woman reflects the couple’s new role as
procreators. Much later, spiritual writers liked to take the Latin form of her
name Eva and turn it round to read Ave, the word
of greeting used by the angel at the Annunciation to Mary, our new Mother.
Obviously, all of this is less a historical account than an
explanation why things are the way they are. It is part of the answer to the
question we raised earlier: If everything God created was so good, why is there
so much pain and suffering in the world? Human pain and sorrows are not
intended by God. Evil is the result of our own misbehaviour.
Again, the New Jerusalem Bible comments:
“The punishment is appropriate to the specific functions of
each: the woman suffers as mother and wife, the man as bread-winner. The text
does not imply that, without sin, woman would have given birth painlessly or
that man would not have had to work with sweat on his brow, any more than that,
before sin, snakes had feet” [i.e. did not have to crawl on their bellies].
Sin upsets the order willed by God: Woman, instead of being
Man’s associate and equal, becomes his seductress, while he for his part
reduces her to the role of child-bearer. Man, instead of being God’s gardener
in Eden, has to struggle against a now hostile environment. But the greatest
punishment is the loss of intimacy with God. These penalties are hereditary.
The doctrine of hereditary guilt is not clearly stated until Paul draws his
comparison between the solidarity of all in the Saviour Christ and the
solidarity of all in sinful Adam (Rom 5). This is the ‘original sin’.
We should avoid a fundamentalist, literal understanding of
all this, as if we were dealing with ‘real’ history. What is being said is that
the human race, as far back as we can go, has been infected with sinful acts
against truth, love and justice and, as a consequence of its own choices, has
suffered hardships of all kinds.
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Commentary on Mark
8:1-10
Today we have the second of two multiplication stories found
in Mark. The first, with 5,000 people, was in a predominantly Jewish area while
this one, with 4,000 people, is in mainly gentile territory. Jesus is reaching
out to both groups. The people have nothing to eat and are hungry. The meaning
is both physical and spiritual.
Once again we see Mark indicating the emotional response of
Jesus. He is filled with compassion for the people in their need.
I have compassion for the crowd…If I send them away
hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way—and some of them have come
from a great distance.
They will collapse “on the way”, i.e. on the road. Jesus is
the Way, the ‘Road’. To walk the road of Jesus, we need a certain kind of
nourishment. This is what Jesus came to give.
The disciples, interpreting Jesus literally, as they usually
do, ask:
How can one feed these people with bread here in the
desert?
In the presence of Jesus, the question answers itself, but
the disciples have not yet clicked. In Mark’s Gospel, they are often shown to
be without an understanding of just who their Master is—that is because they
represent us.
The disciples are asked what they can supply. Seven loaves
and a few fish is all they have. There is a strong Eucharistic element in this,
as in the former story (with the 5,000). The people are told to sit down, and:
…he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks [Greek, eucharistesas] he
broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute, and they distributed
them to the crowd.
Again, we note that Jesus himself does not give out the food
the people need. It comes from him, but is distributed by his disciples. The
same is true today. It is our task to feed the hungry—both physically and
spiritually. All were filled—4,000 people altogether—and even so, there were
seven (a perfect number) baskets left over. This was another sign of God’s
abundance shared with his people.
As before:
…he sent them away. And immediately he got into the boat
with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha. [i.e. back
to Jewish territory]
Jesus was leaving no room for any misinterpretations of what
he had done. The disciples, too, are quickly removed from the scene. There was
to be no self-congratulation or glorying in their connections with Jesus, the
wonder worker. Through the miracle, the teaching had been given and that was
it.
And so, we pray:
Lord, teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to labour and seek no reward,
save that of knowing that I do your holy will.
(Prayer of St Ignatius Loyola)
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Saturday, February
15, 2025
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Father,
watch over your family and keep us safe in your care, for
all our hope is in you. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Gospel Reading -
Mark 8: 1-10
And now once again a great crowd had gathered, and they had
nothing to eat. So Jesus called his disciples to him and said to them, 'I feel
sorry for all these people; they have been with me for three days now and have
nothing to eat. If I send them off home hungry, they will collapse on the way;
some have come a great distance.' His disciples replied, 'Where could anyone get
these people enough bread to eat in a deserted place?' He asked them, 'How many
loaves have you?' And they said to him, 'Seven.' Then he instructed the crowd
to sit down on the ground, and he took the seven loaves, and after giving
thanks he broke them and began handing them to his disciples to distribute; and
they distributed them among the crowd. They had a few small fishes as well, and
over these he said a blessing and ordered them to be distributed too. They ate
as much as they wanted, and they collected seven basketfuls of the scraps left
over. Now there had been about four thousand people. He sent them away and at once,
getting into the boat with his disciples, went to the region of Dalmanutha.
Reflection
The Gospel today speaks about the second multiplication of
the loaves. The thread of union of several episodes in this part of the Gospel
of Mark is the food, the bread. After the banquet of death (Mk 6: 17-29), comes
the banquet of life (Mk 6: 30-44). During the crossing of the Lake the
disciples are afraid because they have understood nothing of the bread multiplied
in the desert (Mk 6: 51-52). Then Jesus declares that all food is pure (Mk 7:
1-23). In the conversation of Jesus with the Canaanite woman, the pagans ate
the crumbs which fell from the table of the children (Mk 7: 24-30). And here, in
today’s Gospel, Mark speaks about the second multiplication of the loaves (Mk
8: 1-10).
• Mark 8: 1-3: The
situation of the people and the reaction of Jesus. The crowds, which gathered
around Jesus in the desert, had no food to eat. Jesus calls the disciples and
presents the problem to them: “I feel pity for this people, because for three
days they have been following me and have not eaten. If I send them away to
their homes without eating, they will faint on the way; and some come from very
far!” In this concern of Jesus there are two important things: a) People forget
the house and the food and follow Jesus to the desert! This is a sign that
Jesus aroused great sympathy, up to the point that people followed him in the
desert and remain with him three days! b) Jesus does not ask them to solve the
problem. He only expresses his concern to the disciples. It seems to be a
problem without a solution.
• Mark 8: 4: The reaction of the disciples: the first
misunderstanding. The disciples then think of a solution, according to which
someone had to bring bread for the people. It does not even occur to them that
the solution could come from the people themselves. They say: “And how could we
feed all these people in the desert?” In other words, they think of a
traditional solution. Someone must find
the money, buy bread and distribute it to the people. They themselves perceive
that, in that desert, to buy bread, this solution is not possible, but they see
no other possibility to solve the problem. That is, if Jesus insists in not
sending the people back to their homes, there will be no solution to feed them!
• Mark 8: 5-7: The
solution found by Jesus. First, he asks how much bread they have: “Seven!” Then
he orders the people to sit down. Then, he takes those seven loaves of bread,
gives thanks, broke them, and gave them to the disciples to distribute
them; and they distributed them to the crowds. And he did the same thing with
the fish. Like in the first multiplication (Mk 6: 41), the way in which Mark
describes the attitude of Jesus, recalls the Eucharist. The message is this:
the participation in the Eucharist should lead to the gift and to the sharing
of the bread with those who have no bread.
• Mark 8: 8-10: The
result: Everyone ate, they were satisfied, and bread was left over! This was an
unexpected solution, which began within the people, with the few loaves of
bread that they had brought! In the first multiplication, twelve baskets of
bread were left over. Here, seven. In the first one, they served five thousand
persons. Here four thousand. In the first one there were five loaves of bread
and two fish. Here, seven loaves of bread and a few fish.
• The time of the
dominant ideology. The disciples thought of one way, Jesus thinks in another
way. In the way of thinking of the disciples there is the dominant ideology, the common way
of thinking of persons. Jesus thinks in a different way. It is not by the fact
of going with Jesus and of living in a
community that a
person is already a saint and renewed. Among the disciples, the old mentality
always emerges again, because of the “leaven of Herod and of the Pharisees” (Mk
8: 15), that is, the dominant ideology,
had profound roots in the life of those people. The conversion requested by
Jesus
is a deep conversion.
He wants to uproot the various types of “leaven.”
• the “leaven” of the community closed up in
itself, without any openness. Jesus responds: “The one who is not against is in
favor!” (Mk 9: 39-40). For Jesus, what is important is not if the person forms
part or not of the community, but if he/she is generous, available or not to do
the good which the community has to do.
• the “leaven” of the group which considers itself
superior to others. Jesus responds: “You do not know what spirit animates you”
(Lc 9: 55).
• the “leaven” of the mentality of class and of
competition, which characterizes the society of the Roman Empire, and which
permeated the small community which was just beginning. Jesus Responds: “Let
the first one be the last one” (Mk 9: 35). This is the point on which he
insists the
most and it is
the strongest point of his witness: “I have not come to be served, but to
serve” (Mc 10: 45; Mt 20: 28; Jo 13: 1-16).
• the “leaven” of the mentality of the culture
of the time Jesus responds: “Allow the little ones to come to me!” which
marginalized the little ones, the children. (Mk 10: 14). He indicates that the little
ones are the professors of adults: “anyone who does not accept the Kingdom of
God as a child, will not enter in” (Lk 18: 17). As it happened in the time of
Jesus, also today, the Neo-liberal mentality is
reviving and
arises in the life of the communities and of the families. The reading of the
Gospel, made in community, can help us to change life, and the vision and to
continue to convert ourselves and to be faithful to the project of Jesus.
Personal Questions
We can always
meet misunderstandings with friends and enemies. Which is the misunderstanding
between Jesus and the disciples on the occasion of the multiplication of the
loaves? How does Jesus face this misunderstanding? In your house, with your
neighbors or in the community, have there been
misunderstandings?
How have you reacted? Has your community had misunderstandings or conflicts
with the civil or ecclesiastical authority? How did this happen?
Which is the
leaven which today prevents the realization of the Gospel and should be
eliminated?
Concluding Prayer
Lord, you have
been our refuge from age to age. Before the mountains were
born, before the
earth and the world came to birth, from eternity to eternity you
are God. (Ps 90:
1-2)
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