NOTES for Mar 6:30-44
The event described in today's reading has always raised many questions, and many commentators and preachers have reflected and reasoned about it, trying to understand what actually happened then in the wilderness. Usually, when setting out on a journey for several days, travelers naturally took a supply of food with them. But this time the decision was evidently made so hastily that there was no time to get ready (v. 33). Judging by the fact that the disciples later had to cross to the opposite shore of the Lake of Gennesaret in order to get to Bethsaida (Mark 6:45), the events described took place on its eastern shore, in Transjordan, which in Gospel times was not a desert in the literal sense but a dry steppe. The eastern shore of the Lake of Gennesaret was a deserted place, and the nearest villages where food could be bought were not close. That is when the miracle took place, the one usually called the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. Nothing definite can be said about exactly how and at what moment it happened, since the Gospel text gives no details that would reveal, so to speak, the "mechanism" of the miracle. Only the result is described: five loaves and two fish were enough for several thousand people, and more than enough (vv. 41-44). The only explanation can be considered the blessing of the food by Jesus mentioned in the account (v. 41), without which no meal was possible for believing Jews, since during the blessing prayer those sitting down at the table call upon God, inviting Him to join them and bless the table and the food. In describing the miracle, the evangelist draws attention to the fact that Jesus' blessing was not an ordinary blessing, but one that allowed those present to enter directly into the Kingdom of God, where even the laws of nature do not work as they do in the ordinary world. Therefore hunger has no place there, and every hungry person is satisfied.