Thursday of week 2 in Ordinary Time
(Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop, Doctor)
Hebrews 7:25-8:6 | Psalm 39(40):7-10,17 | Mark 3:7-12
And he asked his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, to keep him from being crushed. For he had cured so many that all who were afflicted in any way were crowding forward to touch him.
Mark 3:9-10
NOTE: As I wrote this blog, news broke that local actor Aloysius Pang had died from injuries sustained during a reservist training exercise. The unfortunate reference to “being crushed” in my chosen Bible passage is entirely coincidental, but I decided to keep going with the general tenor of this post.
Today’s Gospel speaks of Jesus gaining great fame. Like many a modern celebrity, thousands flocked to see Him, and His disciples probably found themselves having to learn “crowd control” on the job.
I see two modern parallels in the above passage. The first is the need for an “escape hatch”, a mental bolt-hole to which one can retreat when the cares of life become too much to bear. Jesus the God could’ve swept aside the oppressive crowd with but a thought and a word to His heavenly Father; Jesus the man chose not to apply such brute force, and instead prepared to retreat to a place of calm and serenity, out in the middle of the lake.
The second…is the crowd’s eagerness to be near Jesus, to touch Him. We’ve mostly lost this eagerness in modern times, spending our limited time and attention instead on worldly goods and vices. Even in our escape, we’ll fill our “panic rooms” with secular entertainment, choosing hedonism over quiet contemplation with the Jesus who’s always beside us.
Brothers and sisters, let’s make Jesus the #1 celebrity in our lives, yeah?
Amen.