Monday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 5, 2024

Mark 6:53-56

After making the crossing to the other side of the sea, Jesus and his disciples came to land at Gennesaret and tied up there. As they were leaving the boat, people immediately recognized him. They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak; and as many as touched it were healed.

The city of Gennesaret existed during the time of Abraham and Issac.  It was a large, fortified city on the western coast of the Sea of Galilee.  Long before the sea there was called the “Sea of Galilee”, or, later, “the Sea of Tiberias”, it was called the “Sea of Gennesaret” due to the city’s prominence.  To get to this city from Capernaum, Jesus and his Apostles would have sailed south, but not very far.  The city was situated halfway between Capernaum and Magdala.  Now, in Mark 6, 45, the Evangelist tells us that Jesus and his Apostles went from Capernaum, where the Lord had fed the five thousand, to Bethsaida, which was a little distance to the north.  Now, leaving that location, they sail down past Capernaum to Gennesaret.  The ceaseless traveling and the bearing of the hardships associated with that, such as the irregular meals, the sleepless nights, and the physical exhaustion tell us how driven Jesus was to save the human race.  It says a great deal too about the willingness of the Apostles to endure this for his sake.  We get one tiny insight into their attitude in John 6, 69, when Peter answers Christ’s question about whether they will walk away from him: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”  

“People immediately recognized him.”  These words suggest that the Lord was distinguished by his garb, as John the Baptist had been by his.  His appearance certainly did not fit in with that of a Pharisee or a high priest.  His physical features do not seem to have made him instantly recognizable.  The early Father Tertullian even tells us that he looked very ordinary, and this is backed by Isaiah 53, 3: “Despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with infirmity: and his look was as it were hidden and despised, whereupon we esteemed him not.”  

“They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.”  For the people, Jesus meant certain help from above.  He had never turned anyone away, and he had cured everyone who approached him.  He did not demand payment, nor did he act haughtily.  All disease fled before him.  Even the demons who had long sunk their talons into some unfortunate’s soul, screamed and fled in absolute terror.  And as eagerly as the people sought him, he more eagerly sought them.  In fact, he “scurried” about the surrounding country for them.  He let them meet him halfway, however, allowing them to come the final mile or two.  He did this to show that while he offers the grace we could otherwise not receive, we must cooperate with it.

“They laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak.”  These words speak to the Lord’s power, but also to the people’s belief in it.  “The tassel on his cloak”: these tassels or fringes hung off of the mantle the Lord wore over his knee-length tunic, the customary length for Jewish men of that place and time — only the rich wore longer tunics.  The tassels were tiny and thin, like threads or bits of string.  We might think of the Saints as tassels on the mantle of his glorified Body.  As great as they might appear to us through their words and deeds, they are tiny with respect to the Lord.  All the same, Jesus so deigns that if we “touch” one of these “tassels” with our prayers, he will hear them, for as Mark tells us: “as many as touched it were healed.”