Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
I want you to imagine meeting someone great. Someone so wise you can scarcely believe you've made it this far in life without hearing his teachings earlier. Someone so compassionate that he can look you in the eyes with care and concern every single time. Someone so strong in the Spirit that when he prays over people they are healed: mind, body, and spirit. Yet, someone so humble and meek that you are not to make a big deal about him. He has asked you to keep quiet about his miracles, to not make a stir or a fuss on account of him. What do you do with this man? What do you do with your encounter of Christ?
The gospel today allows us to reflect on this scenario and I'd like to propose three answers for us. First, you place your hope in Him. Just His name will be a source of hope for you. This isn't just a wishful thinking hope, rather this is a hope of trust and reliance, the same hope that brought the Hebrews out of Egypt in the reading from Exodus. So thus if you hope in Him the same way the Hebrews hoped in the Lord's deliverance then that means you follow Him, you become His disciple. And why shouldn't we hope in Him, as the Psalm tells us, “His mercy endures forever!”
Second, you learn from Him and imitate Him. How can we not stop and try to learn from Christ? How prideful do we have to be to believe that we don't need His wisdom? And in learning from Him we imitate Him. We reach out to the Father as His children, just as Christ taught us. We reach out to others as our beloved family, just as Christ showed us. And we strive to imitate His humility, for if He wishes discretion how can we seek glory?
Third, we bring others to Him. Let's be honest with ourselves for a second. Christ's request for secrecy in the gospel was not just an act of humility, but also an act of wisdom. It would be so easy for us to get the story wrong or create our own little personal version of Christ if it was our job to just tell people about Him. So He took a precaution in the gospel, he called for discretion, thus forcing people to bring others to Him, as opposed to us distorting his mission with our own agendas. So instead we tell our story – with both words and actions - not to suffice for bringing others to Him, but to help them understand how great meeting Him will be.
And as disciples, we will hopefully hear the same words a dying Japanese POW shared with an American POW who ministered to him during his last days, “If this Christ is anything like you, I can't wait to meet Him.”
- Spencer Hargadon