Fr. Eric Nicolai preached this meditation on February 9, 2024 at Kintore College in Toronto. Base on the gaze of Jesus on the crowds. Mark 8, 1-10: A great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat. So Jesus called his disciples to him and said to them, ‘I feel sorry for all these people; they have been with me for three days now and have nothing to eat. If I send them off home hungry they will collapse on the way; some have come a great distance.’

Here we see his mercy for the crowd. Mercy because they were unattended. They lacked food, but this was an image of the starvation of their souls, that they needed to fill themselves more with his salvific truth: the truth of the Gospel.

Music: 'Undertow' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.

Thumbnail: Limbourg Brothers, from Tres riches heures du Duc de Berry Flemish, c. 1411, Musee Conde, Chantilly MS 65, fol. 168v