Faith in God’s mercy

The Lord has just cured the dumb, the blind, the lame, the sick, and many others who were brought to him. And listen to what he says: I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat (Matt 15:32). Jesus’ heart is filled with love, and it suffers for those people, who have been following him for three days!

Take into account, too, that some of those people have followed our Lord as if he were some sort of folk healer, or a man of worldly power from whom to receive favours, or ut caperent eum in sermone,³⁵ to get hold of something he said and twist it (as is evident in Sacred Scripture). If Jesus works the great miracle of the multiplication of the bread for such people only for their three days’ perseverance, what will he not do for us? In moments of distress, when you feel destitute, turn to our Lord with confidence, abandon yourself in his hands and tell him that we have been following him with love and self-sacrifice for more than three days.