How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?

 In those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said to them, "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat.  And if I send them away hungry to their houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar."  Then His disciples answered Him, "How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?"  He asked them, "How many loaves do you have?"  And they said, "Seven."  So he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground.  And He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and they set them before the multitude.  They also had a few small fish; and having blessed them, He said to set them also before them.  So they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments.  Now those who had eaten were about four thousand.  And He sent them away, immediately got into the boat with His disciples, and came to the region of Dalmanutha.

- Mark 8:1-10

Yesterday we read that Jesus went to the Gentile region of Tyre and Sidon, after being criticized by Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem.   And He entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but He could not be hidden.  For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, and she came and fell at His feet.  The woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth, and she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter.  But Jesus said to her, "Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs." And she answered and said to Him, "Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs."  Then He said to her, "For this saying go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter."  And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out, and her daughter lying on the bed.  Again, departing from the region of Tyre and Sidon, He came through the midst of the region of Decapolis to the Sea of Galilee.  Then they brought to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on him.  And he took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers in his ears, and he spat and touched His tongue.  Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened."  Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly.  Then He commanded them that they should tell no one; but the more He commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it.  And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, "He has done all things well.  He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

 In those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said to them, "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat.  And if I send them away hungry to their houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar."  Then His disciples answered Him, "How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?"  He asked them, "How many loaves do you have?"  And they said, "Seven."  So he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground.  And He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and they set them before the multitude.  They also had a few small fish; and having blessed them, He said to set them also before them.  So they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments.  Now those who had eaten were about four thousand.  And He sent them away, immediately got into the boat with His disciples, and came to the region of Dalmanutha.  Although this feeding in the wilderness may seem like a "duplicate" of the feeding of the five thousand which we recently read about, there are distinct differences that make this second feeding separate and significant.  First of all Jesus is now in a country of mixed Gentiles and Jews.  He has gone to Tyre and Sidon, and healed the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman.  Yesterday's reading also told us He then came through the Decapolis, a Greek-speaking region of ten cities, to the Sea of Galilee.  It is here, in this mixed territory of populations, that the multitude follows Him and this feeding takes place.  My study bible cites the number of loaves as one of the notable differences in the stories.  In the feeding of five thousand, there were five loaves, which symbolize the Law (the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch).  Here there are seven loaves.  Seven is a number that symbolizes completeness; here it indicates spiritual perfection.  In the first feeding, in Jewish territory, Christ is revealed as fulfilling the Law.  Here, among a mixed population, He shows that it is He who grants spiritual perfection.   The three days that this crowd had been with Him echoes the number of days He would rest in the tomb.  Perfection comes through uniting with Christ through death and rebirth (especially via baptism, see Romans 6:3-5), manifest in the New Covenant that will come.  Some scholars note the difference in the types of baskets taken up.  In the earlier feeding of five thousand, the Greek indicates a small basket, sometimes translated as "hand-basket" (Mark 6:43-44).  These were twelve, one for each apostle.  But here, they are a different type of basket, translated as large baskets.  (It is the same word for basket, in the Greek, as the one in which St. Paul was lowered through a hole in the wall in Acts 9:25).  Again, seven baskets indicates completeness.  This is the bread of life that will go out to all the world, both Jews and Gentiles.

Jesus has come through the region east of the Sea of Galilee, that of the Decapolis.  He makes His way back from Tyre and Sidon, a Gentile region to which He'd withdrawn after Pharisees and scribes had come from Jerusalem, criticizing His ministry and His disciples (Saturday's reading).  The healing of the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman (yesterday's reading, above), and the healing and feeding of four thousand in the mixed population, Greek-speaking region of the Decapolis tells us a story about the growth of this ministry and its evolution.  The Syro-Phoenician woman said to Jesus, "Even the little dogs under the table eat from the children's crumbs."  In today's reading, we see the bread that prefigures the Eucharist going to what is likely a mixed population of Jews and Gentiles.  It is an evolution of spiritual understanding, of what is to be offered in salvation to those who may, as my study bible put it, unite with Christ through His death in baptism.  What we observe in Christ's ministry is a fascinating growth and transformation of the ministry itself, as Jesus first goes to the "children" but later will also include those who are not of this fold, and who will also be brought into His flock.  What Christ teaches us, that seems to transcend all other things that we know about Him, is that following the will of God will always be a kind of adventure.  We must prepare for the unexpected.  Even Christ marvels at the unbelief of His townspeople in Nazareth when He comes to His hometown to preach.  Although He is divine, the "Heart-Knower," Christ marvels at the response He finds.  This rejection not only assures us that human will and choices are free, but it also tells us about this ministry.  Christ will go where it is the Father's will He goes, even if that means to His own death - even where His own human will is not in agreement (Luke 22:42).  Christ knows He was sent to the "lost sheep of the house of Israel," and yet we see now a new development beginning in His ministry.  As we watch and walk with Christ, think about one's own life and the many surprises we encounter when things go differently from what we had thought or planned.  Friends fail us, organizations let us down, people turn out to be something unexpected.  Through it all, there is one thing we place first, the one thing necessary that guides us even through storms and the unexpected.