Mk 8:1-10
1In those days when there again was a great crowd without anything to eat, [Jesus] summoned the disciples and said, 2“My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. 3If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will collapse on the way, and some of them have come a great distance.” 4His disciples answered him, “Where can anyone get enough bread to satisfy them here in this deserted place?” 5Still he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” “Seven,” they replied. 6He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground. Then, taking the seven loaves he gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to distribute, and they distributed them to the crowd. 7They also had a few fish. He said the blessing over them and ordered them distributed also. 8They ate and were satisfied. They picked up the fragments left over—seven baskets. 9There were about four thousand people. He dismissed them 10and got into the boat with his disciples and came to the region of Dalmanutha.
BREAD AND FISH: Among the people of Jesus’ time, bread was the essential, basic food. To eat bread was to have a meal. The poor ate bread made of barley, which manages to survive heat as well as water shortage better than wheat, and ripens in less time. The well-to-do usually ate wheat bread.
Vegetables were part of the diet. As meat was considered a luxury, people would eat meat on feast days. Fish was more common. Fish was derived from Lake Tiberias or from the Mediterranean Sea.
Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish to feed the hungry crowd is reported in all four gospels. The Gospel of John specifies that the loaves were of barley (6:9). There are parallels in the account to the story of Elisha’s feeding of one hundred men in 2 Kgs 4:24-44. Elisha’s servant voices out an impossibility: how can a hundred people be satisfied with twenty barley loaves? The disciples tell Jesus that five loaves and two fish are all they have. The parallelism tells us that with Jesus, the time of miracles associated with the prophets Elijah and Elisha has come again.
Today’s Gospel may be the second account of the feeding of the multitude (see Mk 6:34-44) or may be a second feeding, this time involving Gentiles, since Jesus is travelling in the Decapolis areas.
The Synoptic Gospels use ichthys for fish. Since early Christianity, its letters have become an acrostic for Christ (Jesus the Messiah, Son of God, Savior). Fish has become a Christian symbol because of its acrostic meaning and because it recalls the miracle of the feeding of the multitude.