Category Archives: Lectio Divina

Mark presents us with two accounts of a miraculous multiplication of food to feed a great multitude, each with a slightly different twist (the second account can be seen at Mark 8:1-10). This first one occurs after the Twelve have returned to Jesus from their mission work.

The beheading of John the Baptist occupies such a key place in the history which accompanies Christ’s mission that all four Gospels give account of it or allude to it… This story has everything – sex, jealousy, betrayal, revenge, the corruption of power, the murder of the innocent, the instability of the wicked, the doubt which eventually unseats the powerful. One needs to be very well prepared to pray this section of Scripture by entering into it with the senses.

At its heart, the Gospel is all about proclamation. And now, quite suddenly, the group of men who are closest to Jesus – known by Mark as the Twelve – are commissioned to do just this and are sent out to get on with their work. This little account comes hard on the heels…

We can’t ignore the fact that, at the very centre of these past couple of chapters in our lectio, the subject of faith has been held up for our consideration. It has been absolutely essential in all these stories – an increase in faith, the testing of faith, the growth in faith, the witness of faith, the lack of faith.

After the blockbuster Chapter 5, with its scenes filled with drama and shock, and their insistent invitation to consider the role of personal faith in relationship to Christ, and Christ’s own emerging personality and authority, Mark leads us back to Jesus’ hometown – Nazareth, of course, although he doesn’t say it here – and to his own people.

We reach the closing section of this long passage in Mark Chapter 5, and the unfolding of the scenes which commonly give the passage its name. But there is much here than the restoring of the little girl to life.

We left last week’s lectio divina with a plethora of questions to ask ourselves and upon which to reflect – they may still be resonating with us, and so we should continue to allow them to resonate, as we look now at the woman who is very much at the centre of this passage…

Having just concluded a long and technically beautiful passage, Mark presents us with another carefully constructed section of narrative. We are really drawn into the heart of these two stories for many reasons – technically, he weaves the two stories together, sandwiching one with the beginning and end of the other; emotionally, both the scenes are incredibly moving…

In the last lectio divina encounter we meditated on the destructive force of the evil one as Mark sees him possessing this man who lives among the tombs. Jesus goes to meet the man, and the forces which possess him, and they come to him, ready for the encounter. We remember that this type of possession and affliction is a living death in many ways, and Mark emphasizes this for us, depicting this man living in a tomb-scape, a limbo, among the tombs but not yet in one, walking with death as a constant companion and yet ready to break free into life.

For those of you who have been following this lectio you will know that we have just spent an explosive time with Jesus and his disciples in a boat in the middle of a storm. In the eye of that tempest the disciples learned something more about who Jesus is, and he showed himself master even of the elements – truly the Lord of creation. Now we accompany Christ and his followers into another storm, and no less frightening. In fact, in all the gospels this story has to be counted as one of the most harrowing that we read.