The 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time shows us the Twelve arriving from their missionary work and the Lord inviting them to rest. They go to a place where other people too have decided to be with the Lord. There, together with the crowd, the Lord taught them. Later, the Lord will feed them with loaves of bread and fish received from a boy.
The missionaries rest among the crowds Jesus taught;they also get their refreshment with the multitude that are fed. Read the article that you find here and use the following for your guide.
1. When the missionaries return, Jesus invites them a deserted place so that they can rest. Mark tells us that when they reach the deserted place, Jesus taught and later, Jesus fed them. Refreshment for the Lord's missionaries comes from the Lord Himself. We have often heard the saying that the Eucharist is the origin and the goal of all Christian life. But how many of us understand that even the "rest" that we long for after a day's work is also linked to the Eucharist?
Reflect: "Come away to a private place that you may find rest." Do you see this passage as an invitation to visit the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament?
2. John Paul II once used this passage to invite the young to see their contemporaries as Christ sees them. All of us who have been baptized to proclaim the Gospel are invited to look at our contemporaries with the eyes of Christ.
Reflect. Jesus looked and was moved with compassion. To have the eyes of Christ, one's heart must be transformed into his heart; one's love should be transformed into Jesus' love.
Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me. The saints-consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta-constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbour from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter acquired its realism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a "commandment" imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is "divine" because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a "we" which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is "all in all" (1 Cor 15:28). (DCE, no. 18)
Do you see evangelization as a requirement of love for the neighbor?
3. When they arrived, the apostles reported "all they had done and taught".
Exercise. Take a piece of paper (or open your notebook if you have it) and make a list of what you have done during the past week that is related to evangelization. How have you shared your faith? What have you done so that others may be able to hear the Lord better?
When you have finished your list, review it and ask yourself: what can I do to improve what I have been doing during the next week? Write your answer under the title "The Things I'll Do For the Lord Next Week"
