Sunday Meditation: His Heart Moved to Pity

Today we return to counting the ordinal numbers of Ordinary Time.  “Ordinary Time” refers to the ordinal numbers by which we count the Sundays and weeks.  Today is the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time in Year A.  It always seems baffling the Sunday in which we return to counting.  How did we get to eleven?  The Sunday before Ash Wednesday was the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time.  Then we had the Lent and Easter seasons.  Pentecost I think concludes the Easter Season.  Then we had the Solemnities of the Holy Trinity and of Corpus Christi. Both are Solemnities but both count toward the Sundays of Ordinary Time.  So that makes seven and eight.  Why are we at eleven?  I’m not going to look it up.  It will remain a mystery.

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus call the twelve apostles and send them out.  In the first line of today’s Gospel, Jesus’s “heart was moved with pity” for the crowds.  Given that that this Friday was the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, that line really stands out.  Some translations say His heart was moved to “compassion.”  The pastoral homily below will take up Jesus’s emotions, but Gina Hens-Piazza points out in her Spiritual Reflections for this Sunday, Jesus is moved to compassion five times in the Gospel of Matthew: here (9:36), 14:14, 15:32, 18:27, and 20:34.  Gina draws this conclusion:

 

Compassion is more than a feeling. It manifests as an embodied experience. The word refers to a deep, visceral, sometimes “gut wrenching” empathy that moves one to act on behalf of another.  It requires our vulnerability before another so that we can be gifted with what psychologist and theologian Jean Houston once called “leaky margins,” points of interpersonal overlap that allow us to connect with someone in need, just as Jesus did. With this capacity to share in ourselves what is experienced by another, we become radically present to others. That connectedness prompts courage to well up in us, inspiring us to act.

Indeed, the etymological meaning of compassion is “a suffering with another.”

 

 

 

Today’s Gospel:

 

 

At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned,

like sheep without a shepherd.

Then he said to his disciples,

“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;

so ask the master of the harvest

to send out laborers for his harvest.”

 

Then he summoned his twelve disciples

and gave them authority over unclean spirits

to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.

The names of the twelve apostles are these:

first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew;

James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John;

Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector;

James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus;

Simon from Cana, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him.

 

Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus,

“Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town.

Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’

Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.

Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

~Mt: 9:36-10:8

 

Fr. Christopher Gama of the Franciscan Capuchin Friars in their A Simple Word channel provides an insightful homily.

 

Fr. Christopher:

Jesus is surrounded by the crowds. Everywhere he goes, people are bringing him their sickness, their fears, their struggles, their hopes.  They're bombarding him with all of their needs. Then St. Matthew tells us something remarkable.  He says, "At the sight of the crowds, Jesus's heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd."

 

And it's important, I think, to notice what Jesus doesn't first see. He doesn't first see their sins or their failures or their worthiness or even their problems. He doesn't see their condition, right? He sees that they're weary, that they're lost, that they're directionless like sheep without a shepherd. And that's significant, I think, context for Matthew. In the Bible, a shepherd's job is to guide, to protect, to feed, and gather the flock.  And so when Jesus says that they are like sheep without a shepherd, he's saying that they're trying to navigate life alone without God.

 

And then that becomes a surprising image. Jesus looks at the lost sheep and suddenly starts talking about a harvest. The tone shifts a little bit. He says, "The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. And why would he switch from sheep to a harvest? Well, I think because Jesus doesn't see the lost people. He sees their potential. He sees their hearts open and ready for God or potentially.  And he sees that people are ready to receive mercy, healing, and hope. And the problem isn't the harvest.

 

Yes!  He sees the abundant fruit of humanity, and He will summon and commission His apostles to reap the harvest.

For the pastoral homily I turn to Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. who explains why our emotions are sanctified by Christ.

Fr. Cajetan:

What do we see in the Gospel?  We see, we hear this: Jesus’s heart was moved to pity for the crowds.  Why is this so significant?  It is significant because we see that emotions, that feelings, that the sense appetites, that passions, that the affective life are not inherently disordered, not irrevocably corrupted, they are not objectively evil.  Why?  Because Jesus felt things, Jesus had an affective life, Jesus experienced movements of the sense appetites, Jesus had emotions, and Jesus could have no sin, therefore, the emotional life, the affective life, feelings are not evil per se in and of themselves.

 

St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century devoted dozens and dozens of pages to considering the importance of the emotions and to reminding his students in scared theology, in sacred doctrine, in holy teaching that the emotions—yes, they’re wounded, they’re hurt, there’s a struggle in the affective life because of original sin and actual sins—nonetheless they too can be healed and transformed by Christ, by grace, by love and truth and the perfective order of God.

 

The emotional life that we all have is something that grace can sanctify, and our Lord shows us that the affective life is not something to be ashamed of, is not something to chagrin, because it’s a part of what it means to be human.

 

So it is a good thing to be moved to pity and compassion.  That may be obvious but it is significant nonetheless.

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

 

Let’s listen to a Dan Schutte song, “Here I Am Lord,” but I actually adore the Collin Raye rendition.

 

 

I, the Lord of sea and sky

I have heard my people cry

All who dwell in dark and sin

My hand will save

 

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?

I have heard you calling in the night

I will go, Lord, if you lead me

I will hold your people in my heart

 

I, who made the stars of night

I will make their darkness bright

Who will bear my light to them?

Whom shall I send?

 

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?

I have heard you calling in the night

I will go, Lord, if you lead me

I will hold your people in my heart

 

I, the Lord of snow and rain

I have borne my people's pain

I have wept for love of them

They turn away

 

Is it I Lord?  Where do you want me to go?