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The Wilderness and the Flock

7/18/2015

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by: Rev. Robert Leus, cjm 


These two words shape who Jesus is!

The wilderness is the favorite place of Jesus to go and to be with his Father!
It is in the wilderness where he meditated in solitude how he was to bring into the world the glory of God.
It is in the wilderness where he triumphed over temptation.
It is in the wilderness, where he always saw the vast crowd who longed for his presence.  


And in this crowd he found his flock!
Among his flock, Jesus healed!
For this flock, Jesus performed miracles!
This same flock by the thousands, Jesus fed!
By the jeering of this crowd He considered His flock, he was crucified and died!
The wilderness and the flock are the very life of Jesus.


The wilderness stood as a silent witness each time Jesus regenerated, rejuvenated and recharged for all of himself that he had shared and given away.  It also became Jesus’ preferred venue for his disciples to rest as well as the place Jesus asked the apostles to go to for some rest.  

Jesus knew that the apostles were overwhelmed of what they together had done and taught.  That idea, however, was beyond the consciousness of the disciples themselves.  They were simply overwhelmed to realize that what Jesus was doing (heal the sick, drive away demons, etc.) they too could do the same by the power and authority given them by Jesus himself. 

Jesus then wanted for them to take a pause, keep silent and allow the immensity of their powers and tasks to sink in and retrace all those things back to the Source: God the Father.  The wilderness presented itself as the best venue for such choice moments for spiritual grounding.  How the wilderness allowed Jesus to commune with His Father was the very same thing Jesus desired for His disciples to experience.  That place was so crucial in the salvific work.

Being with the crowd that Jesus considered His flock, on the other hand, is where Jesus became like us — a human being in need of someone to guide him.  Just as how this herd of “sheep without shepherd” needed a person who can lead them, Jesus too needed His Father to lead Him.  As the people needed Jesus to take a stand and accompany them, to love and nourish them, so too did Jesus need the Father for the same reasons.  The relationship we see here between sheep and shepherd is mutual:  as Jesus gave his needy flock a provident shepherd, the crowd in return gave Jesus a venue where he could be himself, the Son of God who had a mission to fulfill.

This is what today’s Gospel wants to teach us — that being alone in the wilderness and being among numerous people in a crowd are two opposite means through which we can ground and renew ourselves in the loving presence and guidance of God.  The wilderness offers a place to empower oneself before beginning a mission and to spiritually rejuvenate after accomplishing a task.  The presence of a multitude like a flock of sheep provides us with a community into which we can fulfill our Christian duty as a loving, compassionate shepherd.

However, we can conquer neither the wilderness nor the multitude without the strength of will, courageous spirit and, best of all, the resolve to allow God to make wonders through us.  In short, we need to have the will to surrender to the higher power.  Jesus once showed us the way when he surrendered himself to the Father for forty days, thereby overcoming the snares of the devil.  In the case of today’s Gospel, aside from desiring to share with his apostles his wilderness experience, Jesus surrendered to the stirrings of his heart, allowing his own human side to surface so that he could act according to the need of the multitude.  Through the lens of God’s heart, Jesus was able to see the people as “sheep without shepherd” and himself as the shepherd ready to respond to the call to mission.

Lord God, you invite us to be in the wilderness sometimes so that we can rest in your presence and renew ourselves in you.  Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your flock where we can experience your loving mercy and compassion.  Guide us as we approach to you whether in wilderness or among your people whom you lovingly recognize as your flock needing your shepherding.  Amen.

 

 


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We Belong...! 

7/4/2015

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by: Fr. Serg Kabamalan, cjm 


Belongingness is a very human need. We all long and desire to belong to someone or to a group.  We all need to belong in order to truly live and grow within the human family and communities.  Experience of acceptance and love is crucial as it provides a safe avenue to be who we are, and to become what we are meant to be.  In the long run, belongingness allows us to live our true identity.  If our sense of belongingness is marred or compromised, there is always a nagging feeling of incompleteness and dissatisfaction.  Not only is it uncomfortable and difficult to bear, we also experience dying each time we are denied, excluded and rejected.  

Yet we see in the Gospel this 14th Sunday in the Ordinary Time a Jesus who does not seem to mind experiencing the opposite of what we all hope for.  Instead of an outpouring of love and acceptance, Jesus was rejected by his own people in the little village he called his own.  He was rejected by the people who thought they already knew him thoroughly as they happened to know his profession, his mother, and his entire family.  The ordinariness of his human origin and situation did not jive with the extra-ordinariness of his wisdom and deeds.  It became the basis of their rejection of him.  For them, Jesus did not belong to their community, a foreshadowing of the ultimate rejection of Jesus by the religious leaders of Israel.

Yes, because of this rejection Jesus was unable to perform many miracles save for healing some of the sick.  Other than that he was unfazed.  He came out of the storm of rejection intact and unperturbed, accepting the fact and proclaiming that “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.”

We might be quick to point out that he is God, and therefore it is easy for him to accept the situation.  He is truly divine and hence he does not need the acceptance of his people.  But we have to remember the words of St. Paul:

“Though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself…” (Phil 2:6-8a NAB)

If he became human like us, then he must have felt the pang of hunger for acceptance and belonging as well.  If he was able to withstood the rejection of his people, that must be because he already experienced great love in the heart of his mother, along with the love that his heavenly Father continuously communicated to him.  He was truly human who was able to live and grow to his full potential because he was nurtured in his home in Nazareth with lavish love which enabled him to enter into the experience belongingness in the transcendent Communion of Love as a human being. 

Jesus experienced wholeness, and deep unity within the Trinity in time and the Trinity in eternity in the face of frailty of human existence.  That allowed himto brave the rejection in Nazareth, and the final rejection in Jerusalem.  In the end, he may have been broken physically, but the human spirit that he made his own was never defeated. 

We belong to Jesus by virtue of his self-giving love.  When we call ourselves Christians, we affirm that our whole existence is based in this belongingness. 

Lord Jesus, grant us the grace to live the objective reality that we now belong to you.  Dwelling in your heart, may we truly be free to be and become the best of what we can be.  Amen.



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    Authors

    The following reflections are courtesy of Eudist Fathers in the Philippines with some Eudist seminarians assigned to give their sharing and reflections on Sunday readings.

    For feedback and comments, please email us, cjm.vocph@gmail.com

    Thanks and God bless you!

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