“He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?”
But he answered, you give them something to eat. That would take more than half a year's wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat? — you give them something to eat is the commission: Jesus places the responsibility for the crowd's feeding on the disciples. Their immediate response is economic calculation: eight months' wages (two hundred denarii) would be required to feed this crowd a small meal. The disciples have located the problem (insufficient resources) and stated it correctly. What they have not yet grasped is that the resource calculation does not include Jesus.
Church Fathers on Mark 6:37
The Lord, placing before them, first, what is most profitable, that is, the food of the word of God, afterwards also gave the multitude food for their bodies; in beginning to relate which, the Evangelist say, 'And when the day was now far spent, His disciples came unto Him, and said, This is a desert place.
The time being far spent, points out that it was evening. Wherefore Luke says, 'But the day had begun to decline.'
This in the Gospel of John is the answer to Philip, but Mark gives it as the answer of the disciples, wishing it to be understood that Philip made this answer as a mouthpiece of the others; although he might put the plural number for the singular, as is usual.
Read all 13 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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