January 12, 2012
1st Thursday in Ordinary Time
Jesus, St Mark tells us, was moved with compassion. The original Greek is much stronger. You could say, Jesus’ guts are wrenched by the suffering of the leper. Matthew, Mark and Luke use this particular verb for Jesus’ reaction and always in the context of someone else’s suffering. Here it was the leper, in another place, the crowds who were sheep without a shepherd, for the widow who lost her son. Even more important Jesus uses this verb in two of his most important parables. Both telling us about Jesus and His Father. The Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.
What is the significance of all this? Don’t we all experience this sort of compassion. Most of us are not so depressed or despairing that we are indifferent or even cynical about the suffering of others. Why is it so important that Jesus’ guts were wrenched? It has to do with the weakness of our intellect.
Our intellect should naturally be in touch with the world of the spirit. But sin has crippled it. It is weak before the brightness of the spiritual world. It is fascinated by what it can see or touch. This is real for it. The boundaries of the senses are the boundaries of all that is. The rest is unreal. A shovel is real. God is a figment of the imagination. The opposite is really true. Spirit is the most powerful force. Perhaps we could express energy as a crystallization of spirit and matter as a further crystallization of energy. But our weakened intellect reverses everything.
This is why seeing Jesus experience gut wrenching compassion for suffering is so important. He is the sacrament of God. Every little detail of His life is a precious crumb that must be treasured for it points to God. In the Old Testament, God is said to be compassionate. The Hebrew word used is closely associated with the word for womb. Even more important, this word is used most of often of God than man. God has the same visceral feeling as the mother has for her baby. He is moved like a mother by the sight of the baby’s distress. Of course you could say these are all nice words. Show me the money and I will believe.
Jesus is the money. God in the flesh is moved almost in spite of himself by suffering. By seeing this our weak intellects are given an anchor in the senses to make the leap by faith to the realm of the spirit. If the sacrament is like this how great must be the thing itself. How great must the compassion of the Father. When Jesus walks majestically on the water, we can believe what the Psalmist says of the invisible God, ‘ You, strode across the sea, you marched across the ocean’. When Jesus calms the raging sea with one word, we believe ‘When the waters saw you O God, they trembled’. When Jesus calls forth Lazarus from the tomb, we can sink into the belief that God is the author of life and death. Above all when we see Jesus on the cross, only then can we even begin to grasp that the invisible Father is love. Not just that He loves but that He is love. If the sacrament is such, how great must be the reality it embodies and points to. How great must be the love of the invisible Father who is seen in His Son’s every action.
