When we meditate upon:
Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry Him off to make Him
king, He withdrew again to the mountain alone. [v.15], it helps to be aware
of the nature of crowds and how, much like avalanches which begin gently at the
top of a mountain with a slight movement of snow, and then cascade down with
uncontrollable speed, to understand one reason why Jesus would get away from the
crowd.
There are several aspects of this verse which merit closer
meditation: a] the crowd moving towards Jesus to carry Him off; b] the attempt
to make Him a king; c] Jesus withdrawing and d] alone to the mountain.
A] When Her Majesty the Queen, other members of the royal
family, or the Governor General, or the Holy Father on his pastoral visits,
come into view of the waiting crowd it is not unusual for people to press
forward, gently, peacefully, so no one gets trampled.
Yet there are other circumstances when crowds of people can
stampede, either from fear or unbridled enthusiasm, such as we all saw in New
York when the towers came down, that was a flight of fear, whereas when the
home team wins a major sporting event crowds can stampede onto the field to
lift their heroes on their shoulders.
Sadly, be it stampeding from fear or enthusiasm people can
get trampled, and seriously injured.
In the Gospel accounts presented each year in the Liturgies
of Holy Week, the very crowds pressing forward crying “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday,
will become the Good Friday mob rushing forward crying “Crucify Him!”
B] Unwittingly, no doubt, the crowd in its enthusiasm is
seeking to accomplish what satan failed to tempt Jesus to do, namely abandon
His divine mission and become a mere human potentate.
When Jesus urges us to learn from Him for “I am meek and humble of heart.” [Mt.
11:29], part of that learning is to embrace, with joy and fidelity, the
Holy Will of the Father.
For Jesus the will of the Father encompasses fulfilling His
divine mission as Redeemer which means, as King of the Universe embracing the
humility and meekness of no gilded throne; the Cross becomes His throne; no
bejeweled crown but one of thorns; no ornate palaces but rather a cave at birth
and a tomb hewn from rock in death. No mere ersatz human majesty, but the
glorious majesty of Resurrection.
C] St. John’s use of the word ‘withdrew’ is reminiscent of: They rose up, drove Him out of the town,
and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl
Him down headlong. But He passed through the midst of them and went away. [Lk.
4:29,30].
In both St. John and St. Luke, we observe the uncontrolled
nature of crowds. In both cases, in one to avoid being made a secular king, in
the other to avoid death before ‘His hour’, Jesus leaves. These examples of
Jesus withdrawing, avoiding if you will, anything that is not of the Holy Will
of the Father is consistent with: …. I came
down from heaven not to do My own will but the will of the One who sent Me.
V.38.
This too is the example of the humble heart we are called to
imitate.
D] But when you pray,
go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then
your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you…..[Mt.6:6] We
see Jesus throughout His earthly life practicing this aloneness with the Father
He teaches us to imitate.
Solitary places for prayer, for encounters with God are
found throughout Sacred Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.
Moses experienced this: Meanwhile
Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law…..beyond the wilderness, he
came to the mountain of God, Horeb. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him
as fire flaming out of a bush. When he looked, although the bush was on fire,
it was not being consumed. …………….God called out to him from the bush: Moses!
Moses! He answered, “Here I am.” God said: Do not come near! Remove your
sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. [Ex.
3:1-5]
Satan attempts to misuse solitude when tempting Jesus: Then the devil took Him up to a very high
mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,
and he said to Him, “All these I shall give to You, if You will prostrate
Yourself and worship me.” [4:8,9], Jesus will have none of it: At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away,
Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and Him alone
shall you serve.’” [v.10]
Greater than the paltry magnificence satan offered Jesus is
the reality of true magnificence which Jesus reveals to us on a mountain: After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and
John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And He was
transfigured before them; His face shone like the sun and His clothes became
white as light. [Mt. 17:1,2]
Let us not forget the template of Christian life given us by
Jesus on the Mount of the Beatitudes: St. Matthew chapters 5, 6, 7.
From the earliest days of the Church men and women have
sought out places, spaces, to be alone with God, to, like Jesus, do battle with
satan, thus keeping him, as one tradition says, away from the places where
people dwell, the cities, to labour in prayer and manual labour as needed, as
intercessors for the human family.
Those of the early centuries are known as Fathers/Mothers of
the desert, from whose wisdom we get these teachings from two of them: Abba
Agathon stresses that “prayer is warfare to the last breath” and Abba Lucius
stressed that before seeking the solitary life, we must first have lived
rightly among our brothers and sisters, otherwise we “will not be able to live
rightly in solitude.”
In Medieval times Irish monks and hermits sought what they
called ‘the thin place’, that is, for want of a better descriptive, the place
where they would find the membrane between the cosmos and heaven, at its
thinnest, for there, they figured, they would be closest to God.
Factually the true ‘thin place’ is in the Real Presence of
Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
The key is to ask the Holy Spirit to lead us into communion
of love with the Father, Jesus and Himself, in silence/solitude/the secret
place within us.
Vs.16,17=When it was
evening, His disciples went down to the sea, embarked in a boat, and went
across the sea to Capernaum. It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet
come to them.
There is a beautiful ordinariness in these two verses.
After a hectic day, and needing to travel to their
destination, how very ordinary for fishermen, to go down to the sea and travel
by boat.
St. John does not indicate why they left without waiting for
Jesus. Perhaps they assumed, since He had gone away, He was traveling by some
other route and would meet them in Capernaum.
St. John takes note “It had already grown dark.”, and at the
Last Supper once the traitor Judas has left, notes: And it
was night. [13:30]
Twilight is often beautiful but never lingering, pre-dawn
likewise. The latter giving way to the brilliance of sunlight, the former to
the weight of darkness. Satan is all darkness, and darkness has weight, light
has nothing heavy about it, hence the expression that something is light,
rather than heavy.
We associate darkness with depression, light with joy, as
the psalmist says: At dusk weeping comes
for the night; but at dawn there is rejoicing. [Ps.30:6]
All sources of light illuminate, many like the sun, produce
warmth. Indeed, we combine both when we speak of the light of a fire.
Christ is “light from light, true light from true light”,
the light which darkness cannot overcome.
With Jesus absent, while the disciples were still on the sea
St. John notes: The sea was stirred up
because a strong wind was blowing. [v.18]
Only St. Luke, of all the Evangelists, makes no mention of
an event where Jesus walks on the water. St. Mark: 6:45-53 and St. Matthew:
14:22-24, both recount such an event and in each the disciples are traveling
across the water without Jesus, a severe storm comes up and each account does
include Jesus coming towards the disciples.
V.19=When they had
rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming
near the boat, and they began to be afraid.
To be afraid when on the water and the wind churns the
water, is a normal reaction, for huge waves can swamp even the largest of
ships.
History is filled with famous stories of shipwrecks and
other hazards for sailors, as for example in this verse from the Canadian
singer/song writer Gordon Lightfoot in his song: The Wreck of the Edmund
Fitzgerald: Does any one know where the love of God goes ~ When the waves turn
the minutes to hours?
In fact, as St. John, St. Mark, St. Matthew show the love of
God, Love Himself ‘goes’ towards us when we are in peril on the sea of life: But He said to them, “It is I. Do not be
afraid.” [v. 20]
St. John concludes, without comment: They wanted to take Him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived
at the shore to which they were heading. [v.21]
© 2018 Fr. Arthur Joseph
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