THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD

XVI SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - Mark 6:30-34

Last week, the gospel was about Jesus sending the Apostles into a training mission. In this Sunday’s gospel, we are told that the Apostles came back and reported to Jesus about their experience, their teaching and actions. Interestingly, Paul and Barnabé did the same: “… when they arrived and gathered the church together, they declared all that God had done with them” (Act 14:27). This reporting back reminds us that we are accountable for the mission entrusted to us. When the community sends us to proclaim the Good News, we must give feedback on the way we carried out the mission. Maybe we have lost this sense of accountability, which leads us to communicate and to share. We are responsible for the mission entrusted to us before Christ and before the Church.

After listening to the Apostles’ report, Jesus took them to a lonely place for them to rest. There is always the danger of being drowned by super activism, which leaves no time to rest and reflect. We need time to be with Jesus and be replenished with faith, hope and love. Time to be alone with Jesus is important for us to confront our ways with reality and discover our failures and weaknesses. It is a time as well to feel the loving care of Jesus and to find peace in him. 

In the end, they had no time to rest because people guessed where they were going and arrive there before them. Seeing the crowd, Jesus “had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”  This crowd represents humanity at large, who is always in a state of expectancy, hoping to find rest and peace. Time and again, humanity seems to be lost and is waiting for a reassuring voice and a liberating word, which may give meaning to our lives and the world in which we live. Indeed, Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn 14:6). Before the crowds, Jesus behaved as the Good Shepherd, the one who came for us to have life to the full (Jn 10:10). In Jeremiah (the first reading - Jr 23:1-6), God promised to be the shepherd of his people and to send shepherds according to his heart to take good care of his sheep.

“The Lord is my shepherd;

  there is nothing I shall want.” (Ps 23:1)