Saturday in the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time, February 4, 2023

Mark 6, 30-34

The Apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat. So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place. 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. When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

After sending out his Apostles to preach penance, in Mark 6, 7-12, the Lord seems to have lingered in one place, possibly Capernaum, until they returned.  He probably spent the time alone in prayer.  It is also quite possible that he aided the workmen in the town’s carpentry shop, just as St. Paul would later be found plying his trade, making tents, when he was not preaching.

“Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”  The Lord will make a point with these words.  He and the Apostles set out in a boat for some uninhabited spot but the people, avid for his words, “hastened there on foot from all the towns and arrived at the place before them.”  The boat must have stayed close to the coast so that it could be tracked on foot.  The fact that the people were so willing to do this tells us about their hunger for the food which only the Lord could feed them.  

“When Jesus disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd.”  Instead of feeling annoyed that the crowd’s presence thwarted his plan to give his Apostles rest, he felt compassion for it.  But this was also the lesson he wanted the Apostles to learn, that rest would be scarce for those who teach the Gospel.  If the Lord could not seem to give them rest, than how could they secure it for themselves?  And so, “he began to teach them many things.”  We do not know what he taught them there, but what would we not give for the chance to walk miles across the countryside to hear him as these people did!  We do have the Gospels and can read his words any time we want, but to hear his voice and to feel his presence — we must wait until we are in heaven for this, and meantime we prepare ourselves with the Scriptures wherever we are in this life.

“They were like sheep without a shepherd.”  The Lord sent his Apostles to preach penance, as the Prophets had preached it long before.  This tells us of the absence of anyone else preaching penance.  The priests could not be bothered.  They lived quietly in their towns when they were not at the Temple in Jerusalem, and it was not their assigned duty to preach.  The Sanhedrin lived in their own world and saw no reason to send out preachers.  The Pharisees, who tried to fill the gap in the teaching of the Law, though with their own deeply flawed interpretation, did not preach penance.  The Apostles did what had not been done since the death of the last Prophet, with the sole exception of John the Baptist, who had kept very local.  The people themselves were given no religious leadership.  They were left to fend for themselves, attending synagogue where they would discuss the Scriptures, but where they were not taught what they meant or required of them.  They truly were a flock scattering over the land, left to themselves by their indifferent shepherds.  We see the Lord giving way to compassion for them, teaching them, forming them, reassuring them.  

Oftentimes these days it seems that the faithful have been abandoned by their shepherds and that many sheep are straying into dark forests of heresy, following the lead or the neglect of their pastors.  It has always been so.  Yet the faithful are not left alone.  We have the Church’s age-old teachings and the sacraments, administered by bishops and priests who take seriously their appointments to feed and keep safe the flock, which belongs to Jesus Christ.  Remaining faithful to the Church’s teachings and strengthened by her sacraments, we can rest assured that the Lord continues to be our Shepherd.