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A
Reflection on Mark 8:14-21
In today's Gospel, the disciples find
themselves in a boat with Jesus, worried because they forgot to bring bread.
They have only one loaf among them, and their minds are consumed with this
shortage. Yet standing right there with them is the very One who just fed four
thousand people with seven loaves. Jesus gently rebukes them, asking if their
hearts are hardened, if their eyes cannot see, and if their ears cannot hear. He
reminds them of the abundance that flowed from His hands, twelve baskets left
over when He fed the five thousand, seven baskets remaining after feeding the
four thousand. The question hangs in the air: Why do they worry about bread
when the Bread of Life Himself is present?
We are so much like those anxious
disciples. We carry our worries into the presence of Jesus, fretting about what
we lack, forgetting what He has already provided. We focus on the material
bread, our daily concerns, our financial anxieties, our endless to-do lists, while
missing the supernatural abundance right before us. Jesus isn't merely asking
His disciples to remember past miracles as interesting stories. He's inviting
them to understand something deeper: that He Himself is the provision they
need, and when He is present, scarcity is an illusion. Our spiritual poverty
comes not from what we lack externally, but from our failure to recognize what
we already possess in Him.
This is where the Holy Rosary becomes
such a powerful tool for opening our eyes and ears. When we meditate on the
mysteries, we're doing exactly what Jesus asked His disciples to do: we're
remembering. In the Luminous Mysteries, we contemplate the miracle at Cana,
where Jesus transformed water into wine, showing His power over creation. We
reflect on the multiplication of the loaves, the very miracle the disciples
forgot in the boat. Each decade trains our hearts to see what the disciples
missed: that with Jesus, there is always enough, always abundance, always more
than we can imagine. The Rosary softens our hardened hearts, opens our blind
eyes, and unstops our deaf ears by immersing us repeatedly in the reality of
who Jesus is and what He has done.
The one loaf in the boat is more
significant than we might think. Jesus will soon reveal Himself as the true
Bread from Heaven in the Eucharist, one loaf that feeds the multitudes across
all generations, one sacrifice that is eternally sufficient. When we worry
about scarcity in our spiritual lives, we forget that we have access to this
infinite provision at every Mass. The disciples couldn't see that the one loaf
they had, Jesus Himself, was more than enough for every hunger they would ever
experience.
Questions to Consider:
• What "bread" am I
anxiously seeking today while Jesus stands present before me in the Eucharist,
offering Himself as the Bread of Life?
• When have I witnessed Jesus multiply
small offerings in my life into surprising abundance, and how quickly did I
forget that provision when new worries arose?
• As I pray the Rosary, which mystery
most powerfully reminds me of Jesus's desire and ability to provide for all my
needs?
• How might my life change if I truly
believed that having Jesus means I have enough, that scarcity is not my reality
when I remain in His presence?
©2026 James Dacey, Jr., OFS
