“He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”” (Mark 8:21.)
In commenting on these verses from today’s Gospel Proclamation, Saint John Chrysostom writes:
“It was not to learn faith that they [the Pharisees] sought him, but to seize him.
Can you hear the intense displeasure in his voice? For nowhere else does he appear to have rebuked them so strongly. Why now? In order to cast out their prejudices about clean foods. For not everywhere is permissiveness a good thing. As he earlier had allowed them to speak freely, now he reproves them. He even reminds them of the specific numbers of loaves and of persons fed, both to bring them to recall the past, and to make them more attentive to the future.” (The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 53.)
Can you hear the intense displeasure in his voice? For nowhere else does he appear to have rebuked them so strongly. Why now? In order to cast out their prejudices about clean foods. For not everywhere is permissiveness a good thing. As he earlier had allowed them to speak freely, now he reproves them. He even reminds them of the specific numbers of loaves and of persons fed, both to bring them to recall the past, and to make them more attentive to the future.” (The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 53.)
Collect
O God,
Who enlightened the Slavic peoples,
through the brothers
Saints Cyril and Methodius,
grant that our hearts
may grasp the words of Your teaching,
in true faith and right confession.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Who enlightened the Slavic peoples,
through the brothers
Saints Cyril and Methodius,
grant that our hearts
may grasp the words of Your teaching,
in true faith and right confession.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen
