Mark 3:20 — Community Reflections

MARK 3:20 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread.”

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat — the domestic detail of being unable to eat communicates the intensity of the ministry's demand. The return home (to Capernaum) immediately generates another overwhelming crowd. The inability to eat is not a spiritual boast but a practical report: the needs of the crowd leave no margin for the disciples' ordinary physical needs. This detail also sets up the family's concern in verse 21 — the report of such overwhelming engagement apparently reaches his family as evidence of problematic behavior.

Church Fathers on Mark 3:20

the Lord leads the Apostles, when they were elected, into a house, as if admonishing them, that after having received the Apostleship, they should retire to look on their own consciences.
Bede · 8th century

That is, He has a devil and is mad, and therefore they wished to lay hold upon Him, that they might shut Him up as one who had a devil. And even His friends wished to do this, that is, His relations, perchance His countrymen, or His brethren. But it was a silly insanity in them, to conceive that the Worker of such great miracles of Divine Wisdom had become mad.
Theophylact · 11th century

But mystically, the house to which they came, is the early Church. The crowds which prevent their eating bread are sins and vices; for he who eateth unworthily, 'eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.' [1 Cor 11:29]
Pseudo-Jerome · 5th century

Read all 6 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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