Daily Gospel – August 7

Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew XIV, 13-21

18^th Monday in Ordinary Time

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hich when Jesus had heard (of the death of John the Baptist), he retired¹ from thence by boat, into a desert place apart, and the multitudes having heard of it, followed him on foot out of the cities. And he coming forth saw a great multitude, and had compassion on them, and healed their sick. And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying: This is a desert place, and the hour is now past: send away the multitudes, that going into the towns, they may buy themselves victuals.
But Jesus said to them, They have no need to go: give you them to eat.
They answered him: We have not here, but five loaves, and two fishes.
He said to them: Bring them hither to me.
And when he had commanded the multitudes to sit down upon the grass, he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the Disciples to the multitudes². And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up what remained, twelve full baskets of fragments.
And the number of them that did eat, was five thousand men, besides women and children.

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¹ Retired. Christ much esteemed John, and withdrew himself aside, to give example of moderate mourning for the departed, and to show too, horror of that execrable murder: as in the primitive Church many good men seeing the miserable state of the world in the time of persecution, and the sins that abounded withal: took occasion to forsake those tumults, and to give themselves to contemplation: and for that purpose retired into the deserts of Egypt, and elsewhere, to do penance for their own sins and the sins of the world. whereupon partly rose that infinite number of Monks and hermits, of whom the Fathers and Ecclesiastical histories make mention. Hier. to. 2. in vit. Pauli. Erem. Zozo. lib. 1. cap. 12, 13.

² The Disciples to the multitudes. A figure of the ministry of the Apostles, who as they here had the distribution and ordering of these miraculous loaves, so had they also to bestow and dispense all the food of our souls in ministering of the Word and Sacraments, neither may laymen challenge the same.