“And his disciples answered him, From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?”
His disciples answered, but where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them? — the disciples' response is the same as before the first feeding: pragmatic, limited by ordinary resource calculation. The repetition of the disciples' failure to learn from the first feeding is Mark's point — verse 21 will make this explicit. The question where can anyone get enough bread is precisely the question answered by the first feeding, and yet the disciples ask it again. The hard hearts of Mark 6:52 have not softened.
Church Fathers on Mark 8:4
After the Lord had performed the former miracle concerning the multiplication of the loaves, now again, a fitting occasion presents itself, and He takes the opportunity of working a similar miracle.
Why they who came from afar hold out for three days, Matthew says more fully: 'And He went up into a mountain, and sat down there, and great multitudes came unto Him, having with them many sick persons, and cast them down at Jesus' feet, and He healed them.' [Matt. 15:29-30]
Or else, the seven loaves are the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the fragments of the loaves are the mystical understanding of the first week.
Read all 15 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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