A Compassionate Protector

A Reflection on the Gospel for Sunday, July 21, 2024:
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Mark
​6.30-34

The Apostles returned from their mission. They gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.

He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

I am feeling very open this morning. Perhaps it’s because God wants to heal something in me. Perhaps it is simply because He wants to speak to a heart that has been too busy to listen recently. I used to consider openness something to fear, a weakness of sorts. I now see it as a most precious gift. In the safety of my relationship with Him, I desire openness. 

Healing, in a Christian context, is a divine calling from God for all of us. He is, after all, Jehovah Rapha: the God who heals. Throughout my journey with Him, He has offered many avenues for healing, perhaps the most important of which has been prayer — quiet, restful prayer. It takes time to develop enough trust in God to sit in contemplative prayer. And for me, that trust has been fostered through a process of learning who He is, which is distinct from who I sometimes imagine Him to be.

In the Gospel for this coming Sunday, the Apostles return from their mission, a mission on which Jesus has sent them, and they are hungry and worn thin. At the same time, they are overflowing with stories of God’s glory and the miracles He worked through them. Jesus sees and acknowledges both of these things. He sees the good God has done through them, and He sees their human limitations. For their spiritual growth, it is good for them to be stretched beyond their human capacity — this is the space where we can acknowledge the operation of God’s grace in and through us. He doesn’t intend to leave them in this oftentimes exhausting place of living beyond their means. God not only has compassion on those they serve but on the Apostles themselves. So, He protects them. He calls them to rest. And then He, who is without limitation, staves off the crowds by ministering to them Himself. 

He is also Jehovah Sabaoth: the Lord God of Hosts. The term “hosts” can mean, in the literal sense, the armies of Israel or, in the metaphorical sense the hosts of heaven, the angel armies and, by extension, the stars and the entire universe. He is the Lord God of all these things — the protector over the entire universe. The protector over the Apostles. The protector over me.

The disciples were able to open themselves to receive God’s grace and be vessels to pour Him back out onto the people because they were secure in His protection. I too, can stagger along the seemingly impossible roads He is calling me onto — the roads that are wearing me thin—with a wide-open heart. I don’t have to self-protect when I know God is protecting me.

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Lori MacDonald

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