Monday in the Fifth Week of Ordinary Time, February 7, 2022

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.

“Gennesaret” refers either to a town or the region in which the town was set, on the western edge of the Sea of Galilee between Capernaum and Magdala.   On three sides steep hills stand over the relatively flat, fertile land.  Jesus and his Apostles come there after sailing to Bethsaida (where they went after the deeding of the five thousand).  St. Mark tells us nothing of what the Lord said to the inhabitants of either town, though at Gennesaret “people immediately recognized him” and “they scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.”  We should take a little time to think about the fact that “people immediately recognized him”.  The arrival of a group of men on a fishing boat should not have occasioned much reaction from those who lived in and around Gennesaret.  A rich, fertile region, streams from the hills watered it, and fig trees, olive trees, and grape vines, among other things, flourished there.  Merchants must have come and gone with some frequency.  And yet, Jesus stood out to them.  As far as we know, he had not journeyed there before for the people to know him by his face.  At the same time, to hear Mark tell it, they recognized him “immediately” as the Apostles were mooring their moat, so they did not recognize him from his preaching.  We can wonder if the Lord possessed some notable characteristic in his appearance that distinguished him so greatly: his clothing, his manner of walking, or perhaps the distinctive accent of a man from the inland Nazareth.  We should not discount this possibility.  Even today, persons hailing from the Bronx or Boston can be known by their local accents. 

It is also worth thinking about how the reaction to the Lord’s arrival here and in other places was to “scurry” about the surrounding country to let others know so that they could bring their sick to him.  Indeed, “they laid the sick in the marketplaces” for him to heal them when he came.  When I read passages like this, I am reminded of a mission trip I took with six or seven other seminarians to a very remote village in central Mexico in the mid 1990’s.  The trip came after a full summer in the country taking intensive courses in Spanish, and lasted just a couple of weeks.  We traveled there in pickup trucks and vans alongside medical students who were sent out to remote areas between semesters.  The visits were scheduled in advance so that the people of the town knew we were coming, and they spread the news to their even remoter neighbors.  When we arrived at the town, late at night, a couple dozen people were already lying in what was evidently the village square.  They had been brought — carried by hand — across the country from the village.  Since the village was built on the side of an extinct volcano, it would have been uphill all the way for these folks.  The whole time we were there, people kept coming to see the medical students.  It was the only time all year that any kind of modern medical care was available to them.  That the medical students were mostly dentists made no difference.  One poor old woman, wrapped in a blanket, walked for three days to see “the doctors”.  She had a bladder infection.  When she arrived, practically crawling, it was evening and the “clinic” was closed until morning.  The woman, who knew no one in the village”, quietly lay down on the street in front of the clinic and waited until the clinic was open again.  I heard later that sick people were still coming even after the medical students had gone back to their school.  

The Lord Jesus so desires to heal us of the terrible effects of our sins that he came down from the infinite heights of heaven to offer himself for us.  He continues with each of us today in the Sacraments, diving into the deepest recesses of our hearts in order to cure us of all that divides us from him.  He is the Doctor whose clinic, the Church, is always open.  He overflows with compassion for us and feeds us with the only medicine — his grace — that can save us.  As long as we live we are never so remote from him that we cannot return quickly, and be assured that he is waiting for us.