Navarre Bible Commentary:Thursday, 2nd Week of Ordinary Time

Source: Catholic Man Night

Mark 3:7-12

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

A Multitude at the Seaside

7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed; also from Judea 8 and Jerusalem and Idume′a and from beyond the Jordan and from about Tyre and Sidon a great multitude, hearing all that he did, came to him. 9 And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they should crush him; 10 for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him.11 And whenever the unclean spirits beheld him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.

Cited in the Catechism:  In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Blessed John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium."  He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraphs 581 and 1504.

Commentary

Cures beside the Sea of Galilee

3:10. During our Lord’s public life people were constantly crowding round him to be cured (cf. Lk 6:19; 8:45; etc.). As in the case of many other cures, St Mark gives us a graphic account of what Jesus did to these people (cf. Mk 1:31, 41; 7:31–37; 8:22–26; Jn 9:1–7, 11, 15). By working these cures our Lord shows that he is both God and Man: he cures by virtue of his divine power and using his human nature. In other words, only in the Word of God become man is the work of our Redemption effected, and the instrument God used to save us was the human nature of Jesus—his body and soul—in the unity of the person of the Word (cf. Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, 5).

This crowding round Jesus is repeated by Christians of all times: the holy human nature of our Lord is our only route to salvation; it is the essential means we must use to unite ourselves to God. Thus, we can today approach our Lord by means of the sacraments, especially and pre-eminently the Eucharist. And through the sacraments there flows to us, from God, through the human nature of the Word, a strength which cures those who receive the sacraments with faith (cf. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 3, 62, 5).

Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

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