Parish Bulletin

Parish Letter I8th Sunday of the Year 2008
Come ... all you who are thirsty!

After hearing of the death of John the Baptist, the Gospel tells us, Jesus withdrew to a lonely place. He wanted to be alone to grieve over his friend and cousin, his precursor and herald. He needed time alone to ‘regroup,’ to process the loss of John, to put closure to their relationship. But no sooner than he got there, the crowds had already caught up with him. We see Jesus here facing the challenge to balance his personal need to take time out and mourn the Baptist; and the pressing needs of the people who sought him. When he saw the crowds, he took pity on them and healed their sick.

This Gospel reveals to us a very important truth about Jesus. He was true God and true human being, as we profess in the Creed. What shines out in this Gospel is his genuine humanity. As a human being he felt loss and all the emotions that we feel when someone we know and love dies. He felt the need to be alone, to refocus his life after the loss, to honour the beloved dead. He knew that he would not be much use to those who needed his help when he was feeling this low. This is an idea that many people today, as many others throughout history did, find difficult to understand and accept – that God can be a human being all the way! That God can feel loss and pain, get tired and need rest. That is the mystery of the Incarnation – God became a human being and lived among us.

Then he feeds the multitude miraculously.

It is easy here to emphasize that it was because of his divinity that Jesus performed this miracle. There is no doubt about that – only God can do something like that. Yet, it is important to acknowledge that it is because of his human ability to empathise, to feel with and for others, that Jesus worked the miracle. In his own neediness, he was able to see the need of others. Contemporary spirituality has often called Jesus “the wounded healer.” He knew and bore the wounds of our human condition; hence he understood the pain of the wounds of others. Because he had experienced need he felt for the needs of others. Only God-become-human can do that. So if we make his humanity shine in this miracle we are at the same time making his divinity shine!

Isaiah, the prophet in the first reading, talks about the everlasting covenant out of the favours promised to David. Through the words of Isaiah, God calls out to all who are thirsty, hungry, and have no money. He wants them to come so he can fill them with plenty. Jesus fulfils this promise in today’s Gospel – he fills with plenty the crowds who were thirsty, hungry and had no money. He filled the sick with healing. He felt pity for those who were abandoned. God became a human being so that his promises, given through the prophets, may come true.

St Paul, whom we commemorate this year, came to know Jesus and his life was transformed. It was his encounter with this God who became a human being that made Paul so utterly convinced of Jesus’ power to save. So he could not think of anything that could come between us and the love of Christ. Even death cannot separate us from the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is this love of God, prophesied by Isaiah, proclaimed by Paul and made human by Jesus that beckons us in the Eucharist. Let us open our hearts and draw closer to God who calls us.

Yours in the Redeemer,

Fr. William Guri, C.Ss.R.