Today's Gospel is from Matthew 15:29-37. It describes Jesus performing miracles of healing and a vast crowd of people had gathered and followed him for several days. He looks out and says: "My Heart is moved with pity for the crowd... I do not want to send them away hungry and possibly collapse on the way back." They have a little food between them, Jesus blesses it, breaks it, gives it to his disciples and from there to the people with seven baskets full of leftovers. What I want to focus on is not the miracle, but Jesus' statement that "My Heart is moved with pity." It's a fine enough description in English, but in the Greek, it is called splaghchnizomai, which means "be moved in the inward parts". It comes from a word meaning internal organs, a deep gut-level response, "visceral feeling/reaction".
Have you ever experienced this? Something so powerful, it turns your insides out and can make you feel physically ill? We've all seen those commercials of starving children or helpless animals on TV before. That's how Jesus probably felt or worse to see those people before him starving for physical and, more importantly, spiritual food. I get the feeling when I see someone suffering and there is nothing that I can do to ease their discomfort. I can only pray. To be honest, prayer might be the only thing that can help, and we should take great joy in the fact that we have a way to help, we believe and have faith that prayers will be answered, and we have the gift of asking others to intercede and lift their voices in prayer joining our own.
Lord God, how perfectly, how intimately, you must understand and experience our joys, our burdens, and our sufferings with us. How connected you are to all we go through. If this is true, it's unimaginable what you must have experienced on the cross with the weight and pain of all sin, all the suffering in the world. It makes our trials easier to bear because, at mass, you unite your very self within us. You become part of us and, likewise, we become part of you. We do not walk this road alone, because you share and understand, better than anyone else, what we are going through.
Lord, help us to develop a greater connection with you, give us the grace to be moved in our inward parts by love, compassion, mercy and all the gifts and blessings that flow from you. Let us act swiftly and come to the aid of those in need. Perhaps, our own crosses, our own struggles and trials, are preparing us to have that tender heart of mercy toward someone in a similar situation that they can find hope and peace in the midst of the storm. We ask this and all things in the name of the Father who created us, the Son who died for us, and the Holy Spirit who lives within us. Amen
Written December 4th, 2019
