Saturday in the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time, February 3, 2024

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.

“The Apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done and taught.”  We find in the New Testament references to the care with which the Apostles taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  St. Paul, even fourteen years after he had begun preaching, remarked that, “I laid before them (but privately before those who were of repute) the Gospel which I preach among the Gentiles.”  That is, St. Paul went back to Jerusalem to check with St. Peter and St. James to make sure the content of his preaching aligned with theirs.  It was necessary for the Church to preach what Christ taught and only what he taught, rejecting all else.  The stakes were high: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. 16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”  We see how careful Paul was to distinguish his personal theological opinion from the teachings of Christ in such passages as this: “For to the rest I speak, not the Lord. If any brother has a wife who does not believes and she consent to dwell with him, let him not put her away” (1 Corinthians 7, 12).  So here, in the verse from St. Mark’s Gospel, the Apostles report to their Master what they had preached, both to inform him and to offer for his correction anything they had proclaimed.  So many in the time of the Apostles up until now have made false assertions about the Lord’s teachings, to the detriment of the spread of the Gospel and the salvation of souls.

“Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”  The laborer must rest of he is to continue his work.  The Lord himself, though, granted himself so little rest, knowing how little was the time left to him.

“People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat.”  The impression Mark gives is that Jesus remained where he was at the time he had sent the Apostles off, continuing to teach and to heal all those who came to him.  When the Apostles returned to him after several days, the scene was as it had been before, with people “coming and going in great numbers”.  We note that, once more, Mark points out that “they had no opportunity even to eat.”  This is in keeping with his aim to show that Jesus had a large following among the Jews: it was their leaders, a small group, who rejected him.

“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.”  They departed through the Sea of Galilee to a lonely spot that would not be easy of access any other way.  But the people ran along the coast, following the boat which did not lose sight of the shore, and managed to outpace it so that when it came ashore, many of them were already there, and more were coming.

“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.”  From heaven the Son of God had watched the members of the human race stumble about, groping in their self-inflicted darkness for a way out into the light, and his heart had so ached for them that he came down from heaven to save them, to be their Shepherd: “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me” (John 10, 14-15).

As he has become the Good Shepherd for us let us become good sheep for him so that we might readily enter into the pastures of eternal life.