The Universal Church celebrates Sunday, July 21, 2024, as the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B. In the entrance antiphon, we pray: “See, I have God for my help. The Lord sustains my soul. I will sacrifice to you with a willing heart, and praise your name, O Lord, for it is good.
The central message of this day’s Eucharist is our Lord’s invitation to his disciples, and to us, to take time off our hectic lives to rest. He tells his overworked disciples, in the Gospel, to come away by themselves and rest. The evangelist Mark presents Christ who takes pity not only on his disciples, who have been attending to the crowd non-stop for a long time now but also on the crowd following him because they look to him like sheep without a shepherd. He thus reveals himself as the good shepherd sent by God to bring peace and rest to his people. Here, Christ consciously fulfills the prophecy of Jeremiah, in the First Reading, in which the prophet castigates those shepherds who have failed to take good care of the flock God has entrusted to their care. He tells them that God will gather his scattered people from places of exile, take them away from incompetent pastors, and hand them over to the good shepherd, who will be from the stock of David; and that good shepherd is none other than Christ Jesus. In the Second Reading, Saint Paul tells his converts of Ephesus that the reconciliation of all men and women comes about through the peace of Jesus Christ. We must therefore always have an attitude of patience and forgiveness of one another to merit God’s love for us.
In the course of this Eucharist, let us pray for the grace of compassion for those who are weaker and more vulnerable than us, those who are like sheep without a shepherd, and who count on us to shepherd them and lead them out of the darkness of sin to the light of resurrection, Christ Jesus, the Lord of Justice.
First Reading: Jeremiah 23: 1-6.
Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, against the shepherds who shepherd my people: You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but I will take care to punish your evil deeds. I myself will gather the remnant of my flock from all the lands to which I have driven them and bring them back to their meadow; there they shall increase and multiply. I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble; and none shall be missing, says the Lord. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David; as king he shall reign and govern wisely, he shall do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved, Israel shall dwell in security. This is the name they give him: "The Lord our justice."
Comment
In today’s first reading, we meet the prophet, Jeremiah, the second of the Major Prophets, the first being Isaiah, the third Ezekiel, and the fourth Daniel. Jeremiah lived in the last decades of the kingdom of Judah – a very important period since it saw the collapse of the Assyrian empire, the rebirth of the Babylonian empire, and the complete disappearance of the kingdom of Judah with the deportation of its leading families to Babylon.
Jeremiah lived in Judah when the forces of King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 587 BC and deported its inhabitants to Babylon. Jeremiah was well placed to see all these events and he was familiar with the conditions in Judah after the deportation. He was born into a priestly family and received his prophetic mission from God round about the year 626 BC, while still a young man. During his long ministry that lasted over forty years, Jeremiah never tired of reminding his people of their covenant obligations and warning the incompetent religious and political leaders, as we hear in this day’s reading, that their infidelity would bring down God’s anger and punishment on the whole land. Even though he was a peaceful man, Jeremiah was constantly in conflict with the leaders of his people, the kings, priests and false prophets, but he was not afraid because he spoke in God’s name.
His warning of impending doom for Judah went largely unheeded until King Nebuchadnezzar’s forces came storming into Jerusalem. They conquered the Holy City and exiled all the prominent members of its population to Babylon, especially its princely and priestly classes. Some Church historians believe that Jeremiah stayed back in Jerusalem for a while before being taken to Egypt by force by some Jews, who fled after the assassination of the king the Babylonians had put in place. This tradition holds that Jeremiah was eventually assassinated by his fellow Jews and is therefore thought to be buried on the African continent.
In this day’s passage, Jeremiah looks to the future after the exile and uses the image of the shepherd to proclaim a new era in which God himself will be the shepherd-ruler of his people. He will raise up a new king who will govern justly and the new situation that will develop after the return from exile will be more glorious than that of the period after the Exodus from Egypt.
Through Jeremiah, God promises that he will never leave his people without good shepherds to gather them and guide them. The Church that is in Cameroon stands in dire need of such shepherds; shepherds that gather together God’s flock and bring them to the Lord, not shepherds who divide our people along tribal, ethnic and linguistic lines as we painfully see happening so often in our country. Let us pray, in the course of this Eucharist, for God to raise from among our people holy, upright, dedicated and courageous pastors who will truly shepherd our people and refrain from promoting divisive tendencies. “Doom befall the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture – it is the Lord who speaks!” Amen.
Second Reading: Ephesians 2: 13-18.
Brothers and sisters: In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh, abolishing the law with its commandments and legal claims, that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile both with God, in one body, through the cross, putting that enmity to death by it. He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
Comment
As we mentioned last Sunday, and it is worth repeating, Saint Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians is one of what is usually referred to as his “Captivity Epistles” because they were written when the Apostle to the Gentiles was in prison. The others are Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon. In the course of his ministry, Saint Paul suffered imprisonment in Ephesus, Caesaria, and Rome. Church historians believe he wrote the Letter to the Ephesians from Rome from the years 61-63 AD.
Ephesus was the leading city in Asia Minor. It had been conquered by Alexander the Great in 334 BC and later came under the dominion of Rome in about 133 BC. From then it became the administrative and religious center of the Roman province known as “Asia”.
From ancient times, this city gave its religious allegiance to the oriental goddess of fertility, whom the Greeks identified as Artemis and the Romans with Diana and whose magnificent temple was regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The city of Ephesus was also famous for magic and occult practices and its inhabitants were notoriously superstitious – very much like Douala today. That is why Saint Paul did not have it easy establishing a faith that directly countered the practices of the day.
In the passage selected for our meditation, Saint Paul is convinced that the Church spreads the knowledge of God’s universal plan because Christ is her head. The major difficulty arises from the position of the Jewish people, who consider the separation from the Gentiles is indispensable, if the purity of their spirit and of their race is to be maintained. But Paul tells them that the Church is one big universal family that has no room for divisions between Jew and Gentile. Through his death on the cross, Christ has abolished the division of mankind into Jew and Gentile. The Gentiles, who had been far away from God, are now on the same level as the Jews because they share the same New Covenant that has been sealed with the blood of Christ.
Saint Paul speaks of the “new man” who is none other than Jesus Christ, who stands for both Jews and Gentiles because he is the new Adam. By taking human nature and bringing about our redemption, the Son of God has become the cause of salvation for all, without any distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female (Gal 3: 28).
Christ came and preached peace to all irrespective of race, tribe, or color of skin. One is tempted these days to remind Church leaders in Cameroon of this simple fact about Christ: he came to unite, not to disperse and those chosen from among us to shepherd our people also have this obligation to unite all, irrespective of tribe or region of the country. This call is more urgent now than ever before with the crisis our country is going through today, with religious leaders not always seeming to speak with one voice.
Let us pray for those God has chosen to pasture his flock, especially those who are tempted to separate God’s flock entrusted to their care. “God our Father, you have entrusted your people into the care of our pastors, priests, and bishops. Through human weakness, they may be tempted to make disparaging remarks about one people over another. Send your Spirit of love to guide them, Father, and strengthen their faith that they may not see the flock you have given them to shepherd as Jew and Gentile; rather, they should see them as one people with one pastor, our Lord, and Saviour Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, One God forever and ever. Amen.”
Gospel acclamation: “Alleluia, alleluia. My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and they follow me. Alleluia.”
Gospel: Mark 6: 30-34.
The apostles rejoined Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. And he said to them, 'Come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while'; for there were so many coming and going that there was no time for them even to eat. So they went off in the boat to a lonely place where they could be by themselves. But people saw them going, and many recognised them; and from every town they all hurried to the place on foot and reached it before them. So as he stepped ashore he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length.
Comment
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is asking us to take some time off work and rest. It is good to work and earn an honest living but, in the process, we must take good care of our bodies, the temple of God’s Spirit, by giving it time to rest. In our free time, we need to recuperate our energies if we are to serve others better and also avoid injuring our health. However, solitude can make us uncomfortable; resting can make us feel guilty, especially if we have been brought up to honor a work ethic that equates idleness with laziness. But we need stillness from time to time so we can hear God speak to us in a still, small voice. It is not always easy to hear God’s voice in the deafening noises that daily assault our ears in many of our cities today.
“Come away …. and rest awhile,” says our Lord. Resting does not necessarily mean doing nothing. Rest should be a time to recuperate, gain strength, form plans, and come back to work with renewed energy. It should be a time of interior enrichment, a time when the love of God is given a chance to grow in us and when we try in a special way to make life more pleasant for the people around us.
Rest is what our Lord plans for himself and his disciples in the Gospel of this day. The disciples come back from their mission tired, exhausted, and worn out, and our Lord wants them to take a rest. But their search for a quiet place to rest is interrupted when many people come, eager to hear him speak. Instead of getting annoyed with them, as one would have expected, Christ feels compassion on seeing their spiritual need. The people, who look like sheep without a shepherd, need instruction and our Lord wants to meet this need by preaching to them. He is the good shepherd Jeremiah talks about in the first reading of this day. He gathers the remnants of God’s flock and brings them back to the fold, where they will be fruitful and multiply.
The sheep need guidance and when left alone they cannot find their way about. They need the shepherd to put them out to pasture. They are helpless in the presence of wild beasts and robbers. Only in Jesus’ presence can they feel safe and secure. Jesus forgets his tiredness when he sees his helpless people searching for him.
What lesson are we given in this Gospel message? As followers of Christ we should, from time to time, take a rest to revisit our relations with others in a calm, peaceful environment. Retreats, under the guidance of a spiritual director, are indispensable for us, Christians. Retreats provide occasions for us to nourish our souls and renew our spiritual lives. During a good retreat, we make resolutions and one of them can be to sacrifice our own interests and comfort to attend to others. When Christ puts the interests of others above his, he teaches us a powerful lesson: the needs of others must come before ours. We must learn to be shepherds to others. Jesus is our shepherd who, as the Psalmist says in the Responsorial Psalm, leads us near restful waters so he can revive our drooping spirits. If we should walk in the valley of darkness, no evil would we fear because our Lord is near with his crook and staff to shepherd us and lead us to the Father’s house where he has prepared for us a great banquet that is the envy of all. We thank you, Lord, for always being there to listen to us, to teach us and make our hearts burn within us as we listen to your words of salvation. Amen.
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