3 February 2024 Mark 6:30-34
The crowd was at it again.
All Jesus wanted to do was talk with the Twelve about their evangelistic mission. Empowering people for witness, after all, was why He came. The Twelve had just gotten back from their first evangelistic venture, and had a lot to talk about (Mark 6:30). These Twelve were the ones He had chosen to build the community of faith, and He needed time with them. But the crowd once again busted in and they couldn’t even sit down to eat (6:31). So they got in a boat and headed for another place. The crowd saw it, anticipated where Jesus and the Twelve were going, and got there before them (6:33).
Jesus didn’t trust crowds, and this was why. It was always about their agenda, not His. They didn’t care about what He wanted, but only about what they wanted.
But wait…
This crowd was different.
This crowd had been watching Jesus, and became familiar with His movements. They knew enough about Him that they could anticipate where He was going. They got there first, and waited. They went to a place where they were likely to find Jesus, and waited.
They were starting to act less like a mob, and more like disciples.
So Jesus said, “OK. I can work with that.” And he taught them (6:34).
So go to a place where you are likely to find Jesus, and wait.
There was a woman in Fairfax, Virginia – Vietnamese, immigrant, Buddhist. She needed to find a preschool for her children to make her more free to work and support them. The only one she could find that wasn’t already full was in a Catholic Church, who said they would be glad to take her children – even gave her a discount on the tuition, because life was hard for them. The woman asked one day, after she had dropped the kids off, if she could spend a few minutes in the Church. What Church would ever say no to that? So she went in and sat, appreciating the quiet, the few minutes of stillness and peace. She began to do this regularly.
One day, while sitting in the Church, she became suddenly aware that someone else was in the room. She looked around and saw nothing. This started to happen all the time. She got up and walked around, but still found no one. But it was still peaceful and lovely, and she got used to the feeling that someone else was in the room, even though she could never find anyone. That presence seemed to make the stillness deeper, the peace richer, even though she could never account for it, because no one else ever seemed to be there.
Finally, she asked if she could come to Mass. She was curious about what else went on in that room, and it happened that she came to Mass on Corpus Christi Sunday, when Catholics celebrate the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. She heard about the Real Presence, and the Tabernacle, and how Jesus was always present there, in the Church, in the Tabernacle – that’s what the red candle was all about. And suddenly it all came together: there was Someone else in the room. All those times, Someone else was there, the source of all that beautiful stillness and peace. She became a Catholic and evangelized her family. She evangelized her relations in California, who evangelized their families. There was a small earthquake of evangelization.
And all because she went to a place where she was likely to find Jesus, and waited.
Jesus says, “OK. I can work with that.”
Go to a place where you are likely to find Jesus, and wait.
Commenti