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From: Mark 3:7-12

Cures Beside the Sea of Galilee

[7] Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Gali-
lee followed; also from Judea [8] and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the
Jordan and from about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, hearing all that He did,
came to Him. [9] And He told His disciples to have a boat ready for Him; [10] for
He had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon Him to touch
Him. [11] And whenever the unclean spirits beheld Him, they fell down before Him
and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” [12] And He strictly ordered them not to
make Him known.

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Commentary:

10. During our Lord’s public life people were constantly crowding round Him to
be cured (cf. Luke 6:19; 8:45; etc). As in the case of many other cures, St. Mark
gives us a graphic account of what Jesus did to these people (cf. Mark 1: 31,41;
7:31-37; 8:22-26; John 9:1-7, 11, 15). By working these cures our Lord shows
that He is both God and man: He cures by virtue of His divine power and using
His human nature. In other words, only in the Word of God become man is the
work of our Redemption effected, and the instrument God used to save us was
the human nature of Jesus—His Body and Soul—in the unity of the person of the
Word (cf. Vatican II, “Sacrosanctum Concilium”, 5).

This crowding round Jesus is repeated by Christians of all times: the holy human
nature of our Lord is our only route to salvation; it is the essential means we must
use to unite ourselves to God. Thus, we can today approach our Lord by means
of the sacraments, especially and pre-eminently the Eucharist. And through the
sacraments there flows to us, from God, through the human nature of the Word,
a strength which cures those who receive the sacraments with faith (cf. St Tho-
mas Aquinas, “Summa theologiae”, III, q. 62, a. 5).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.