We will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council on October 11th of this year. One of the initiatives of the Second Vatican Council for the ongoing renewal of liturgical and church life has been the introduction of a three-year cycle of readings to be proclaimed at the Sunday Mass. Meant to expose the members of the church to a larger body of Sacred Scripture, the three year lectionary cycle allows for a yearly focus on one of the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark or Luke – with
St. John’s Gospel interspersed throughout the cycle. This year we are in ‘Year B’ and so we have been hearing week after week from Mark’s account of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Today we begin a slight departure from Mark as for the next four Sundays we will read from the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel. John’s was the last of the four Gospels to be composed, and so it represents a further level of thinking and reflection on the life of Jesus, presenting Jesus’ teaching in the form of longer discourses. The sixth chapter from which we are about to hear is known as the
Bread of Life discourse because it begins the teaching about the role of the Eucharist in the life of the follower of Jesus and his church.
We begin our four-week experience of the sixth chapter of St. John at
today’s Sunday Mass with the miracle of the loaves and fishes as found in John 6:1 – 15. The Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – are remarkably similar in their record of teachings, healing and miracles. John presents the life of Jesus in a very different way. The miracle of the loaves and fishes and the feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle that is recorded in all four of the Gospel accounts. It is also found in Mark 6:31-34, Matthew 14:13-21 and Luke 9:10-17.
Mark is thought to be the first Gospel to be recorded in written form, probably written in the late 60’s or early 70’s in the city of Rome. Mark’s Gospel has long been understood as the primordial account from which both Matthew and Luke draw a great deal of their material. Clearly both Matthew and Luke have additional sources from which they draw for their accounts of the ministry of Jesus. Both Mark and Matthew have a second account of similar miracle with the crowd numbering 4,000 men with additional women and children.
Two questions: What is the purpose of the second similar miracle? Why is the second occurrence missing from Luke? Mark records the second occurrence as taking place in the Greek-speaking eastern coast of Sea of Galilee, largely a non-Jewish community. Perhaps this is an early reference to the universality of Jesus’ mission. Why missing from Luke? There is a remarkable anomaly in Luke’s Gospel in that, after a generally parallel account, everything in Mark’s gospel from 6:45 – 8:26 is missing in Luke’s gospel. Is this a deliberate omission, or did Luke have a copy of Mark’s gospel that was missing this section?
The incredible similarity between Mark’s account and what we have heard today in John’s account of this miracle has led many to conclude that John relied on Mark for his record of this event in the life of Jesus.
Feeding of the 5000 - John 6:1-15 - Mark 6:30-44
Walking on the Sea - John 6:16-24 - Mark 6:45-54
Request for a Sign - John 6:25-34 - Mark 8:11-13
Remarks on Bread - John 6:35-59 - Mark 8:14-21
Faith of St. Peter - John 6:60-69 - Mark 8:27-30
Prediction of Passion
and Betrayal - John 6:70-71 - Mark 8:31-33
More to come…
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