Feeding a multitude with a small amount of food is an event described repeatedly in the Gospel. Perhaps it is repeated precisely to emphasize that this is not merely an episode or some isolated miracle: there is a certain pattern here, a distinctive feature of the Kingdom that...
Feeding a multitude with a small amount of food is an event described repeatedly in the Gospel. Perhaps it is repeated precisely to emphasize that this is not merely an episode or some isolated miracle: there is a certain pattern here, a distinctive feature of the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world. This feature is connected with what the nature of our world becomes in the Kingdom. We are accustomed to nature not being very obedient to us: it yields to our physical influence, but certainly not to our will.
Given our fallen condition, this is for the best. It is difficult even to imagine what the world would become if its elements responded to every deliberate and involuntary movement of our will. Originally, however, nature was meant to obey not only God's will but the human will as well, subject to one condition: the human will was to act in the world together with God's. The union of the two wills opens every possibility, including what we commonly call a miracle.
Yet we call phenomena of this kind miracles because in our world they remain exceptions. In the Kingdom, the exception becomes the rule: there, nature's complete submission to the will not only of God but also of the human person is the norm. In the Kingdom, at a given moment and place, there is not some fixed quantity of food, but exactly as much as is needed by everyone who wants to eat.
This is not some external influence on the food of the fallen world, artificially changing its nature so that a small quantity will suffice for a multitude. It is a change in the food as such, a transformation of its very substance that opens to it the possibility of existing differently, not as it does in the fallen world. We perceive as a miracle this different mode of existence of the same entirely earthly food in a new quality, and the manifestation of the properties connected with that quality. The Evangelist repeats the same event several times in order to show us that this is not a miracle but a new norm, the norm of the Kingdom.
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8:1 Mat 15:32.
8:8 So they did eat - This miracle was intended to demonstrate, that Christ was the true bread which cometh down from heaven; for he who was almighty to create bread without means to support natural life, could not want power to create bread without means to support spiritual life. And this heavenly bread we stand so much in need of every moment, that we ought to be always praying, Lord, evermore give us this bread.
8:11 Tempting him - That is, trying to ensnare him. Mat 16:1.
8:12 Mat 16:4.
8:15 Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod, or of the Sadducees; two opposite extremes.
8:17 Our Lord here affirms of all the apostles, (for the question is equivalent to an affirmation,) That their hearts were hardened; that having eyes they saw not, having ears they heard not; that they did not consider, neither understand: the very same expressions that occur in the thirteenth of Matthew.And yet it is certain they were not judicially hardened.Therefore all these strong expressions do not necessarily import any thing more than the present want of spiritual understanding.
8:18 See note at Mar 8:17
8:23 He led him out of the town - It was in just displeasure against the inhabitants of Bethsaida for their obstinate infidelity, that our Lord would work no more miracles among them, nor even suffer the person he had cured, either to go into the town, or to tell it to any therein.
8:24 I see men as trees walking - He distinguished men from trees only by their motion.