Jesus’ death filled the hearts of His followers with grief and bewilderment. Yes, He had foretold His death – He had also foretold His resurrection – but all this was something incomprehensible to them; something they could do nothing about or had forgotten in the whirlwind of events.

But what nothing could extinguish in their hearts was the love for the Lord – the same love that compelled the women who followed Jesus to rush to His tomb at the first opportunity to anoint Him and thus pay Him their last respects. They went to do what they could, because for them everything was over…

In one of the poems of the German author Bertolt Brecht, there is such a little reflection: “I sit by the roadside / The driver changes the wheel. / I do not like the place I have come from. / I do not like the place I am going to. / Why with impatience do I / Watch him changing the wheel?”

The blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, shall purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

How can blood cleanse someone? The Book of Revelation speaks of the redeemed of the Lord wearing white robes, and it is said that they are washed in the blood of the Lamb. How is this possible? Blood stains, blood defiles, blood cries out to heaven for vengeance!

In today’s Gospel, which tells of the feeding of the five thousand, it is said about the time of its occurrence that “the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.” This remark has a deeper meaning than simply chronological: it connects the feeding of the five thousand and ultimately the entire life of Jesus, including His suffering, death, and resurrection, with Passover. Passover, the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, was a foreshadowing of the redemption accomplished in Jesus Christ, the deliverance of all mankind from slavery to sin, evil, and death.

At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus tells two parables. In the first of them, He speaks of Satan and Himself: Satan is the strong one, Jesus is the one who is stronger than Satan and has defeated him.

However, although Jesus has defeated Satan, it is quite frightening and alarming that Jesus portrays Satan as a landlord, armed to the teeth and holding everything he owns, including mankind, which has become his slave through sin, with almost absolute power.