Mark 8:14-21 | Prayer Card | Do you not yet understand?

Mark 8:14-21   Do you not yet understand?

And Make us Good Boys, Painted by Adelaide Hishouf, Printed card, Executed in 1920’s © Christian Art Today The disciples had forgotten to take any food and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Then he gave them this warning, ‘Keep your eyes open; be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’ And they said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ And Jesus knew it, and he said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you not yet understand? Have you no perception? Are your minds closed? Have you eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear? Or do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of scraps did you collect?’ They answered, ‘Twelve.’ ‘And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full of scraps did you collect?’ And they answered, ‘Seven.’ Then he said to them, ‘Are you still without perception?’   READ MORE     Reflection on the Prayer Card In our short Gospel passage of today, Jesus puts no less than 9 questions to His disciples! They had just witnessed one of Jesus’ most amazing miracles, the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and yet they still were left unconvinced. How frustrated Jesus must have felt with them! The main question Jesus puts to His disciples is probably: ‘Do you not yet understand?’  To be fair on the disciples, they probably had full faith in Jesus, but the miracles must have puzzled their minds at times. It is the going hand in hand of faith and reason which they probably struggled with. And yet, faith and reason DO go hand in hand. One can’t exist without the other. Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Letter, Fides et Ratio, published in 1998, starts with the following words: ‘Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves’.  The divine drama is being played out all around us, and yet we don’t see it. Furthermore, we don’t always realise what our vocational part in it is. We can only discover that through prayer… Faith, reason and… prayer!… very sweetly illustrated by the little boy on today’s prayer card kneeling and speaking to God… by Patrick van der Vorst