Navarre Bible Commentary:Monday, 5th Week in Ordinary Time

All the City Was Gathered at His Door

Mark 6:53-56

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

Healing the Sick in Gennesaret

53 And when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennes′aret, and moored to the shore. 54 And when they got out of the boat, immediately the people recognized him, 55 and ran about the whole neighborhood and began to bring sick people on their pallets to any place where they heard he was. 56 And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or country, they laid the sick in the market places, and besought him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment; and as many as touched it were made well.

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, paragraph 1504.

Commentary

Cures at Gennesaret

6:52. The disciples do not yet see Jesus’ miracles as signs of his divinity. They witness the multiplication of the loaves and the fish (Mk 6:33–44) and the second multiplication of the loaves (Mk 8:17), but their hearts and minds are still hardened; they fail to grasp the full import of what Jesus is teaching them through his actions—that he is the Son of God. Jesus is patient and understanding with their defects, even when they fail to grasp what he says when he speaks about his own passion (Lk 18:34). Our Lord will give them further miracles and further teaching to enlighten their minds, and, later, he will send the Holy Spirit to teach them all things and remind them of everything he said (cf. Jn 14:26). St Bede comments on this episode (Mk 6:45–52) in this way: “In a mystical sense, the disciples’ efforts to row against the wind point to the efforts the Holy Church must make against the waves of the enemy world and the outpourings of evil spirits in order to reach the haven of its heavenly home. It is rightly said that the boat was out on the sea and he alone on the land, because the Church has never been so intensely persecuted by the Gentiles that it seemed as if the Redeemer had abandoned it completely. But the Lord sees his disciples struggling, and to sustain them he looks at them compassionately and sometimes frees them from peril by clearly coming to their aid” (In Marci Evangelium expositio, in loc.).

[See Note on Parallel Passage in Mt 14:34-36]

Cures in Gennesaret

14:34–36. Learning from the faith of these people on the shore of Lake Gennesaret, every Christian should approach the adorable humanity of the Saviour. Christ—God and Man—is accessible to us in the sacrament of the Eucharist. “When you approach the tabernacle remember that he has been awaiting you for twenty centuries” (St Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, 537).

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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