Mt 9:36-10:8
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt 9:36).
Does God care what happens in my life? Does God know what I am going through in my life? Today’s Liturgy of the Word helps us in our searching for the answer. Though today is not the Good Shepherd Sunday, our readings focus on the image of God as the Shepherd. The First Reading from the book of Jeremiah and the gospel have references to shepherds.
In ancient Israel it was customary to give the king the title of “shepherd”. This is why in the First Reading the kings of Israel are referred to as shepherds. But what surprises us is that those rulers, instead of taking care of the people entrusted to them, they “scattered the sheep and have not attended to them” (Jer 23:1). So, God decides to be the Shepherd himself, “I will bring my sheep back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply” (Jer 23:3). In the Book of Ezekiel, we have an even more tangible image of God as the shepherd. God says, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak” (Ez 34:12-16). To do so, in today’s reading God promises to raise up a shepherd who “shall reign as king and … shall execute justice and righteousness”. From the beginning of Christianity this text was understood as a prophesy about Christ. This is why in the gospel we have Jesus, the Shepherd, who fulfills that promise.
During the Easter season we were reminded that the Risen Lord is ‘the Good Shepherd’. On Good Shepherd Sunday, however, Christ was presented as the One who takes the lost sheep on His shoulders and brings it home. Today we have a down-to-earth image. As we are told, people from all the towns look for Jesus. They do not only follow Him – they race ahead of Him and wait for Jesus when He arrives (Mk 6:33). It is to say that people weighed down by life and their daily problems (they) look to Jesus to renew their hope.[1] As we are told, “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt 9:36). Even though Jesus intended to take a rest with His disciples, He changes His plans and reaches out to the people. Out of compassion, He wants to give them hope. The description of the people, “like sheep without a shepherd” is an accurate portrayal of the spiritual lives of many of us.[2] We are the ones who desperately seek Christ for light, strength, and guidance.
The encounter of Jesus with the people who are in need stirs in His heart a very strong emotional reaction. To describe that reaction, the evangelist uses a particularly meaningful Greek word, splagknίzomai, which is translated as ‘compassion’. The work literally means to be moved to the inner parts of one’s body. The choice of such a graphic word serves to convince us that the idea that the compassion of God towards us – both in our physical and spiritual needs – is rooted in His tender care for us.[3] We often wonder, “Does God understand my situation?” “Does He know what I am going through?” Today’s gospel gives us the answer. Compassion as a quality of God teaches us an important lesson about God’s relation to our needs and our sufferings. When we find ourselves in any need, God’s heart is deeply moved by our situation.
In many places in the Gospel, we see Jesus deeply moved by the needs of the people. When a leper, on his knees, begged Jesus, “If You are willing, You can make me clean,” the evangelist says; “Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the leper, and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed’” (Mk 1:40-41 NAU). Jesus could heal the leper by a single word, without any contact with Him. Yet, He chooses to touch him; He does so out of compassion towards the leper’s suffering. When Jesus saw simply hungry people, it was not even the evangelist but Jesus Himself who said, “My heart is moved with compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat” (Mk 8:2). On another occasion, people were carrying a man who had died. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow. When the Lord saw that woman, “he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came forward and touched the dead man, and … said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’” (Lk 7:13-14).
In our dictionaries, compassion is defined as entering into the situation of another person so that we feel the same as them. But it is noteworthy that the compassion of God means much more than empathy or feeling the same. The compassion of God means that He takes our needs and sufferings upon Himself and transforms them into hope and meaning for us. He does so in a mysterious but real way by the very fact that He dies for us. St. Peter writes, “Christ himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that … by his wounds you have been healed” (1Pe 2:24). To say, “by His wounds we have been healed” is to say that the same way as on the Cross Christ transformed all evil into hope for us, if we trust in Him, He will transform our sufferings, whatever they are today, into a precious grace.
There is no satisfactory answer to why we experience anguish, suffering, death – but the fact that Jesus is moved with compassion towards us reveals that, when we turn to Christ, even the deepest darkness in our lives can be transformed into hope for us. To say that Jesus out of compassion “began to teach the people” who came to Him, is to say that, when we come to Christ in our needs, He will fill our life with meaning, regardless of how difficult our situation might be.
Let us not lose heart when we find ourselves in any need; let us turn to Christ, the One who understands us. As today’s gospel emphasizes with strength, if we come to Christ with faith and trust, out of His compassion, He takes upon Himself all that is broken within us or around us in order to transform it into hope and grace for us.
[1] John Thornhill sm, “16th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B.”
http://www.theemmausseries.com/b16sunday.html (July 16, 2021).
[2] Father Thomas Rosica, CSB, “Jesus, the Compassionate Shepherd of God.” Gospel Reflection for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time B. https://zenit.org/articles/jesus-the-compassionate-shepherd-of-god/ (accessed July 9, 2018).
[3] Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1993). 279-280.
Homilies - Fr. Pawel Jamroz 