Sunday 16 (B-2006): Vital Attraction
(Mark 6:30-34)
How powerfully attractive is Jesus Christ!
I am sure you recall how just a few words of his
(“Come, follow me!”) attract the apostles to abandon everything and follow him.
It seems almost irrational that a grown man would
leave his career and follow a stranger on the strength of a few words.
Yet, how overwhelming those words must have felt! How gripping the tone of voice and manner of speaking of Jesus!
His voice seems to pierce the deepest being of
the apostles. It cuts through the manifold levels of resistance of any human heart precisely because it originates in his
own Sacred Heart.
The voice is empty, functional at best, if it does
not proceed from the heart, if it does not articulate the heart. The deeper the region of the heart it resonates, the more
powerful will the voice be.
“The Apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done
and taught.”
These are the opening words of today’s Gospel.
Although Jesus had sent them out, they just had to return to him and tell him everything. They did not, could not, consider themselves
as autonomous authorities on the Gospel: as the Word in Person sent them, so they refer back to that Word all they have been
able to accomplish by its power.
Their lives now revolved around him;
they were rooted in his life;
they could no longer think of themselves as having
a life except in terms of their relationship to Jesus.
Attraction to
him had become union with him;
it had become communion
with him and with all others who had the same experience.
His Word led inevitably to His Communion, just
as now, at Mass, the readings lead to the Eucharist.
But the apostles are not the only ones to experience this attraction.
The vast crowd also felt it.
“People were coming and going in great numbers,
and they had no opportunity even to eat.”
In a gesture of great practicality and understanding,
Jesus tries to give the apostles a break in a deserted place. But to no avail.
“People saw them leaving and many came to
know about it. They hastened there on foot from all the towns and arrived at the place before them.”
Just picture that scene!
We’ve all been in a big crowd. There is great
power in it, a raw kind of power which might even seem animalistic (think of the “World Cup” or baseball games!).
At first, maybe only a few people actually knew
where Jesus was going, but, in a crowd, word spreads like wildfire.
So does anxiety or panic. You can imagine that
some of that crowd, maybe those who had not yet had a chance for a one-on-one with Jesus, felt anxious as they saw Jesus departing.
Like children who panic when they see a mother
or father going out the door, separation anxiety and sadness set in.
I remember well as a child screaming at the closed
door after my parents would go out, “can I go? can I go?”
Imagine a crowd of adults screaming that! Imagine
the energy it would unleash! No wonder they “hastened on foot” to where they thought Jesus was going. No SUV’s;
no helicopters!
I wonder how many were trampled upon, or how many
toes were bruised by frantic feet standing on them!
There would be a rush to get to the front, to get
closer to Jesus.
There would be not a few frayed tempers and fisticuffs.
Those at the water’s edge would feel pushed from behind; some would be crushed; others would have at least wet feet!
What would be going on in their hearts?
Deep cries for healing, deep yearnings for peace
and freedom from oppression and depression;
a famished hunger for meaning, for a sense of purpose,
for clarity of direction;
a parching thirst for acceptance, for love, for
forgiveness.
This, and so much more, would be focused on Jesus;
all would be seeking to drink from Jesus the solution to their miseries, his joy, his inner strength, his deep peace, his
power for love, for reassurance, for life.
“When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity
for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.”
This is the response of Jesus to that vast crowd.
His pity was not an emotional one, but a theological
one: his heart was moved as the heart of God in the face of the untold suffering
of the entire human race from the beginning of time until its end.
His heart alone is able to comprehend fully the
desolation of every human heart in the face of pain, suffering and death.
This scene from the Gospel is a mini-version of
the loving God’s compassionate gaze upon the entire human family, a gaze which does not remain aloof and disengaged,
but which leads to much more.
Indeed, the Son of God “disembarks”
from heaven upon the shores of the world, to take upon himself the vast guilt and sin of mankind and to destroy it in the
furnace of his own heart through his death and resurrection.
That same Jesus stands in our midst here today, no less desirous of attracting
our pain, our uncertainty, our weakness, our half-heartedness and, yes, our sinfulness to himself.
His is no fatal attraction, but a vital attraction,
indeed, a vitalizing attraction.
He stands teaching us, through the readings from
his Word and through my humble words.
He invites us to allow ourselves to feel the attraction
to him that so many saints and sinners have felt over the centuries.
He attracts us to himself above all in the Eucharist,
in Holy Communion.
And he attracts us for no other reason than that
he is attracted to us with the warm, eternal longing of the heart of God.
His heart is moved with pity for us, and if we
do not want his pity, then let us accept his love, unconditional, unfailing, unchanging and irrevocable love.
Don’t say you are unworthy of that love.
You miss the point if you think that way.
No-one is worthy of his love!
His love is a free
gift, unmerited and unmerit-able. Remember that little notion called “grace”?!
Have the guts to let go of the idea that you must
earn his love; his love would not be love if it had to be earned! It would be wages!
Rather, once you let his love flood the deep recesses
of your heart, then you will not only be able, but unstoppable in wanting to show forth that love by living as he wants you
to.
It’s God’s love which makes us able to live a good, moral life; it’s his love which makes us worthy.
We can’t
be worthy on our own, no matter how perfect we think we are!
You can’t run a car without gas; you can’t
live a good moral life without the love of God deep within.
Don’t think you need to be good to seek out
God.
God wants the bad
to seek him out, precisely because we need his love to make us good!
You don’t need confession if you have no
sin!
Of course, if we seek out Jesus and his healing
love but then refuse even to try and change our badness, then our search has been false.
The gas is given in unending supply to drive on
God’s paths; on any other paths, the car will stall, the gas evaporate.
Every day we need to let the longings of our hearts
lead us to Jesus, whatever
those longings may be!
We need “to hasten on foot” to him.
Then, in turn, we ourselves will become attractors
of others to him until the vast crowd of humanity stands before him to be filled utterly with the unfathomable treasures of
his Sacred Heart.
Msgr.
Peter Magee
Sunday,
July 23rd
Annunciation,
DC: 5.30 vigil & 7.00 am
