Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while - Mk 6:30-34
Today's Gospel scene begins with sharing a spiritual experience. The disciples have returned from their missionary work and share its course, fruits and difficulties. Jesus knows well the toil of this work, which is associated with fatigue and often rejection, and therefore wants the disciples to rest in a desert place. There is time for apostleship, but also time for relaxation with others and time for solitude and prayer.
The disciples rest next to Jesus. Rest is a return to the sources, it is the opportunity to be with Jesus, enjoy His closeness, listen to Him, experience His acceptance, friendship, love, and participate in His plans. It is next to Jesus that the disciples recover their strength, learnto be able to serve others again.
The disciples briefly enjoy the rest. In a moment, the people thirsting for the word of God gather around Jesus. The disciples will now share in Jesus' care and mercy. They will serve by allowing others to rest with Jesus. Poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid wrote that to rest means to "conceive anew". Rest in Christ is "beginning life anew". Rest in Christ is not only for us. We are to know Christ, learn Him, accompany Him, reflect Him in our lives, and even become "Christ to others."
Before the disciples could rest, a large crowd from all the cities reached them. The crowd of people who have heard about Jesus wants to see him, touch him, hear him. There is a shudder in the Gospel of a certain rush, but it is an exceptional rush, very different from our obsessive and pointless pursuit. Saint Mark compares the crowd of people hastily following Jesus to sheep without a shepherd. They are weak, helpless, restless, endangered, needing not only health, but also direction and sense, and they ask openly for help.
When Jesus saw the crowd, "took pity on them." The word pity, however, has no pejorative meaning. Rather, it means "he was moved", or even more - "his insides were agitated, his heart was agitated." This word refers to the womb, to motherly love. Jesus loves like a mother, selflessly. He takes pity on the needy, talks with them, teaches, heals and feeds. He takes care of them, meets their expectations. He shares with them not only food, but also his word, his time, himself. God in Jesus is God suffering with people who are in need.
Why am I coming to Jesus again today? What do I expect from him now? What lesson do I want? Does my heart move with pity? Do I feel sorry for people who are suffering, for people on the margins, who are in spiritual poverty, or in material need? What kind of service should I practice more: spiritual or material?
Reflection from Blessed Charles Eugène de Foucauld
Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while (Mk 6: 31)
“Lord, you lead your apostles to a desertedplace, so that, as you say, they may rest. How good are you, my God, that you want evangelical workers to rest from time to time. How sweet and salutary it is to rest with you in the desert! How good you are, Lord, that you want them to have rest in their apostolic life from time to time, that you command them to do so and set an example for it, because you yourself will rest with them. How good you are in showing them so clearly that there should also be a time of rest, solitude and isolation in your company.
In our life, private or public, let us have time to rest, to spend solitude in the company of Jesus ... (it is necessary in every life, but the more it is involved in public affairs, the more it is necessary). Let us make a retreat and let it have three distinctive features indicated by Jesus. First of all - let it be a rest, not a time of fatigue, tension, work that torments the spirit, but a time of calm, from which we come out without spiritual exhaustion, rested and refreshed by the sweet rest at the feet of Jesus.
Second - let it be a time of isolation, because the more we are alone with Jesus, the more we will enjoy Him. After all, lovers like to be alone; the less we are in the world with others, the more we will be able to devote our time, our thoughts, our whole heart to love and contemplation of Jesus, and the more sweetly and fully enjoy our Beloved.
Third - let it be a time of solitude in the company of Jesus, constantly with Him, without worrying about anything else but Him, remaining sweetly at His feet, looking at Him without words or asking Him questions, always enjoying Him like the Blessed Virgin or St. Magdalena, when they were alone with Divine and beloved Jesus ... Frequent retreats, usually annual, should be rest, solitude, a time of contemplation and meditation at the feet of Jesus. In contemplation, let us ask Him what we should do, say and think to be obedient to Him. Contemplation always, and sometimes meditation, is compatible with what Jesus gives and indicates; we have to follow His Spirit”.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george