Breaking Open the Word - 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B — July 18th, 2021

Jesus Wept, by James Tissot

We continued our journey through the Gospel of Mark this Sunday with a brief, yet powerful, passage. Our sharing opened with a discussion of Our Lord’s reaction to the crowds: “He was moved with compassion for them.” Scholars tell us that the original Greek of this phrase conveys more than mere pity; it is, rather, a deep and powerful movement of the heart. A common pitfall in the spiritual life is to equate holiness with lack of emotion, to assume that only those with mild or even stifled feelings can become Saints. Jesus Himself gives the lie to such a statement. He is the Son of God, the all-holy One, and we find Him weeping at the tomb of a friend, passionately decrying abuses of the Temple, and – in this Sunday’s Gospel – being “moved with compassion” at the sight of those in need.

Why then do we so often see our emotions as an obstacle to holiness? The answer lies in the disorder that has reigned in the human heart ever since sin entered the world. Emotions are meant to be subject to our will and reason, but after man’s fall that harmony was broken. As a result, we have all experienced the havoc wreaked by irrational and out-of-control emotions! It is difficult to “think straight” when we are sad, or angry, or overwhelmed by any strong feeling, and thus a large part of the spiritual life consists in re-ordering these unruly passions with the help of grace. The goal is not to become stoic and detached. Rather, it is to experience emotions as God created them to be: “motors” propelling us towards the pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful. And lest we become discouraged at the long road ahead of us and think the effort is not worth the reward, we can look to the example of the Saints. These men and women “fought the good fight” to the end, and they became more and more fulfilled as human persons as they grew closer to God. Nobody weeps, laughs, or lives a fuller life than the one who has become who God created him or her to be!

We also spoke about the Gospel in light of our First Reading. Clearly, Christ is showing Himself here as the Divine Shepherd of Jeremiah’s prophecy, the One Who loves and regathers His scattered “sheep.” One Sister was struck by the line that describes God’s flock as returning to “their meadow.” She saw this as an image of the Church, where the Lord gathers all the nations to Himself. In the modern world, the Church is often seen as the “Jesus club,” a purely voluntary organization that is “good for some people,” but hardly a necessary part of salvation. However, the Church is, as Bishop Robert Barron has put it, “an organism, not an organization.” The life of Christ, flowing through the Sacraments and works of mercy, transcends all the divisions found in merely human societies and allows the Church to be truly universal, able to apply to all people of all places and times. Once we realize the awesome reality of the Mystical Body of Christ, which is so much greater than the external signs we tend to associate with it, we long to share this reality with everyone we meet through evangelization.

Illustration of the “Celestial Rose” from Dante’s Paradiso

Finally, we delved into the riches of the Second Reading from Ephesians. The themes of peace and unity are interwoven throughout the passage, and for good reason – in God’s plan, we cannot have one without the other. True peace comes from union with the Father and with one another in Him. This peace is not mere superficial calm or absence of conflict; it is far deeper and can keep us “anchored” even when we are in the midst of great suffering and difficulty. In fact, we come to true Christian peace through the Cross, not in spite of it! Focusing more deeply on the concept of unity, one Sister brought out the amazing depth of the connection between believers that St. Paul describes. The language he uses even echoes the “two becoming one” through the marriage of Adam and Eve in Genesis! It is only through our union with God in Christ that we are able to be so profoundly united with one another – and if this unity is so deep on earth, what will it be in Heaven? Eternal life is a profound communion with God, but also in Him with all those who are saved. What joy will be ours when we see, more clearly than was ever possible on earth, the beauty of each individual soul and the glory of God’s mercy in every life!