Mark 8, 1-9 + CSDC and CV

Mark 8

Mark 8, 1-9 + CSDC and CV

CV 77a. The supremacy of technology tends to prevent people from recognizing anything that cannot be explained in terms of matter alone. Yet everyone experiences the many immaterial and spiritual dimensions of life. Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us. We should never cease to marvel at these things.

Rising above a materialistic vision of human events

CSDC 574b. However, the choice of a party, a political alliance, the persons to whom public life is to be entrusted, while involving the conscience of each person, can never be an exclusively individual choice. “It is up to the Christian community to analyze with objectivity the situation which is proper to their own country, to shed on it the light of the Gospel's inalterable words and to draw principles of reflection, norms of judgment and directives for action from the social teaching of the Church”[1203].

Notes: [1203] Paul VI, Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens, 4: AAS 63 (1971), 403-404.

(Mk 8, 1-9) They ate and were satisfied

[1] 1 In those days when there again was a great crowd without anything to eat, he summoned the disciples and said, [2] "My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. [3] If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will collapse on the way, and some of them have come a great distance." [4] His disciples answered him, "Where can anyone get enough bread to satisfy them here in this deserted place?" [5] Still he asked them, "How many loaves do you have?" "Seven," they replied. [6] He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground. Then, taking the seven loaves he gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to distribute, and they distributed them to the crowd. [7] They also had a few fish. He said the blessing over them and ordered them distributed also. [8] They ate and were satisfied. They picked up the fragments left over - seven baskets. [9] There were about four thousand people. He dismissed them

107. Men and women, in the concrete circumstances of history, represent the heart and soul of Catholic social thought[202]. The whole of the Church's social doctrine, in fact, develops from the principle that affirms the inviolable dignity of the human person[203]. In her manifold expressions of this knowledge, the Church has striven above all to defend human dignity in the face of every attempt to redimension or distort its image; moreover she has often denounced the many violations of human dignity. History attests that it is from the fabric of social relationships that there arise some of the best possibilities for ennobling the human person, but it is also there that lie in wait the most loathsome rejections of human dignity.

Notes: [202] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 11: AAS 83 (1991), 807. [203] Cf. John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Mater et Magistra: AAS 53 (1961), 453, 459.

[Initials and Abbreviations.- CSDC: Pontifical Council for Justice And Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church; -  SDC: Social Doctrine of the Church; - CV: Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in truth)].