Tuesday after Epiphany Sunday
1 John 4:7-10 | Psalm 71(72):1-4,7-8 | Mark 6:34-44
By now it was getting very late, and his disciples came up to him and said, ‘This is a lonely place and it is getting very late. So send them away, and they can go to the farms and villages round about, to buy themselves something to eat.’ He replied, ‘Give them something to eat yourselves.’ They answered, ‘Are we to go and spend two hundred denarii on bread for them to eat?’ ‘How many loaves have you?’ he asked. ‘Go and see.’ (Mark 6:35-38)
“I’m not a professional counselor. What do you expect me to say to that troubled kid?”
“I’m not a trained paramedic, so how do you expect me to help that accident victim?”
As it was with Jesus’ disciples, so it all too often is with us. We don’t have the proper skills and resources to Do The Right Thing, so why bother?
Yet when it’s our child who’s going through a rough patch, or our loved ones bleeding out on a cold pavement, we move heaven and earth to do something, don’t we? Somehow, we muster the compassion to do everything in our power to ease their suffering, and we somehow stem the heartbreak and the bleeding despite our woeful lack of training.
It’s as if God somehow made it all possible, once we summoned the determination to act. As St. Paul reminds us:
It is God, for his own loving purpose, who puts both the will and the action into you. (Philippians 2:13)
✞ ✞ ✞ ✞ ✞
The disciples were probably as weary and hungry as the five thousand men and their families. We can rationalize, from a human point of view, their attitude of “look, master, this is an impossible task for us, let them take care of themselves”.
But Jesus immediately challenges them: “Give them something to eat yourselves. This is what I called you for, so get on with it!”
And He reminds them to search within themselves for the resources to begin the work: “How many loaves have you? You mean you haven’t even bothered to check? Go and see, then start the ball rolling. I’ll be right there beside you, multiplying your meager beginnings into something wonderful indeed.”
So, brothers and sisters, the next time you hear that quiet voice within you:
I’m not a catechist or a lector, so how do you expect me to share God with others?
quash it mercilessly, as you would any unworthy thought of your own inability to “love thy neighbour”.
Then take a hard look at yourself, and ponder with all sincerity what gifts God has given you, no matter how pitiful you think they are. Somewhere in the depths of that nearly-empty basket of yours…is a little candle that, with proper application of a little Holy Spirit, will erupt into a bonfire of love.
GO AND SEE, THEN GET ON WITH IT!
The Lord is waiting. Tarry no longer.
Amen.