Taking Others at their Word

One morning, oh, about 10 or 11 years ago, I was running a bit late for work. I left in such a hurry, I forgot that I had taken my debit card out of my wallet. There was no cash in there either, but that was par for the course.

Anyway, after I got into my Jeep and had driven down the driveway, I noticed an index card someone had put under my windshield wiper: some kind of note, I guess. But, as I say, I was in a hurry, so I decided to just leave it there and drive on. I’d see what it was when I got to work.

Then, when I got to the outskirts of downtown Indianapolis, it suddenly began to rain. And I mean buckets of rain – a real deluge. So, I set my windshield wipers to full speed and they were barely keeping up. This, of course, dislodged the index card, which then became stuck to the windshield directly in my line of sight.

Some mornings everything goes wrong.

As a result of these distractions, I failed to immediately notice the traffic ahead of me slowing to a stop. When I did notice, I slammed on the brakes of course, but the road was slick from the rain and I slammed – ever so gently – into the car in front of me.

The car pulled into a parking lot just ahead and I followed. We exchanged insurance information and waited for the police, who came and made a report. That was the end of that. (Except for when they sued me two years later, but that’s another story). I never did discover what, if anything, was written on the index card.

When all was said and done, I noticed that one of my tires was mostly flat. To this day I don’t understand the physics behind that. There was no puncture. Anyway, I was right next to a gas station, with an air pump, so I got it over there. The machine took quarters.

I had no quarters – no cash, no debit card, no cell phone. And I’m late for work. I can’t risk driving the Jeep with such low tire pressure. I have no way to work. No way to get home. No way to let my boss know why I’m late and getting later. The rain and the distress of the morning have turned me into a disheveled sight.

So, there I am, transformed in an instant from an employed husband and father of two with a house and a mortgage, into a bum with a ridiculous sob story begging for change from passersby at a gas station.

un mendiant – Pencil –  Gavarni P.

I felt rather a fool telling my story and begging for change only to be ignored by everyone I asked both in and out of the gas station. Most ignored me completely – not even making eye contact. One to whom I did manage to speak gave me quite a look of incredulity, actually rolling his eyes. I was not believed and I was not helped. For me, they could not spare a dime, as they purchased their coffees and gasoline.

Realizing I was making something of a nuisance of myself, I decided to go elsewhere to beg. Across the street was a bar just opening up. I walked in. And there, I was listened to. The bartender opened up the till and gave me some quarters, and all was well. Thus ended my career as a beggar.

One thing to learn from all this is that, if we’re going somewhere together, you may want to offer to drive. But another thing to learn is to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and to “give without expecting repayment” (Luke 6:31, 35a).

Do you want to be taken at your word? Then take others at their word, even if your suspicions are aroused. In Christ, we may become as guileless as children – as innocent as doves, even while we are at the same time as cunning as serpents (Matt 10:16).

You might need others to take you at your word quite suddenly, as I learned from experience – even if they don’t know you and have no reason to trust you – even regarding an unbelievable situation.

That’s another thing, just because you don’t believe a beggar’s story (and I’ve certainly heard some whoppers) doesn’t mean you can’t offer to help. “The Most High is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish” (Luke 6:35b). We can be kind to the unbelievable, to the liar and the thief, to the drug addict and the prostitute.

We might be surprised to find that it’s unexpected folks who are kind to us in our time of need. I was quite struck by the fact that the straitlaced types buying gas at the gas station wouldn’t help me, but the folks at the bar, thought by some to be of less moral quality, were the ones who helped me. They gave without expecting anything in return.

Let’s let go of the question of what’s in it for us. God doesn’t show us kindness, mercy, and love for his sake, but for ours. And he commands us to do the same. Far from limiting our loving-kindness to those who can give us something in return, Jesus teaches us to love even our enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, give to everyone who asks, give even to the thief, give without expecting anything in return (Luke 6:27-30, 35).

“Be merciful,” he commands us, “even as your Father is merciful.”  And this is the point, really. He is commanding us to be like God, which we become by his grace. God is kind to the unkind and loving to the unloving. He is kind and loving to us. Let us be kind and loving to each other, also to our enemies, real and imagined. Only when there is not one excluded from our love are we in Christ.

Jesus knows the hearts of others and we do not.

Jesus knew what the scribes were thinking (Matt 9:4). He knows what we're thinking too. He knows everything. There are no absences in the omniscience of God.

This is not true of any of his creatures – not even the angels, fallen or unfallen. We humans are of massively less intelligence than the angels. Pseudo-Dionysius says that "the intellectual power of the angel shines forth with the clear simplicity of divine concepts."[i] Their minds are close to God. Meanwhile, we tend to muddy things up.

Still, there are things even angels do not know. There is nothing that God does not know. All knowledge, in fact, comes from God. If you know a thing (and that's as opposed to thinking that you know a thing), it is because God has given it to you to know. If God did not give the gift of knowledge, you do not know what you think you know. You merely believe it. And mere belief is not knowledge.

Everybody has an opinion. But not everybody has knowledge. The reason angels and men do not know everything is because God has not given us everything to know.

One of the things he does not give us, usually, is the knowledge of one another's thoughts. People sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that they know what other people are thinking. And this so often leads to judgmentalism. How commonly we fail to give the benefit of the doubt. How commonly we fail to admit our own ignorance to ourselves. We do not know what other people are thinking. We cannot judge them. We do not know their hearts or intentions. But God does.

We should try to remember that we are not Jesus when we are tempted to believe our own suspicions about other people. Let’s become guileless. Let’s stop thinking we know what we do not know. Let’s become unassuming. Or, if we must assume, let’s assume the best possible intentions on the part of others.

I do not say that we should not judge good from evil. I do not say that we should not judge actions. We can, we should, and we must. Paul exhorts us today: “hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good” (Rom 12:9). Our consciences are given to us for a reason. I say, rather, we must not judge hearts. That judgment is the province of God alone.

Encaustic Icon of Jesus Christ, 6th century.Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai (Egypt)

God alone can see and judge the hearts of other men. Jesus knew what they were thinking because Jesus is God become man. Jesus saw that the scribes in their hearts were accusing Jesus of blasphemy.

Think on that. To accuse God of blasphemy. That right there is blasphemy. There really were blasphemers in Capernaum (4:13, 9:1), but Jesus was not the blasphemer, the scribes were the blasphemers.

We commit this sin ourselves if, in our hearts, we despair. We’re tempted to this despair by the things we suffer. And even more so if we think we know our own sufferings are worse or less just than those of others. Comparison to others will goad us to despair.

We suffer terrible things, it is true. Furthermore, it is true that God had and has the power to deliver us from all suffering. And it is true that, despite this, we continue to suffer.

However, it is our great hope that, in Christ Jesus and in his resurrection, we will, through suffering in Christ Jesus on his cross, enter into eternal life where there is no pain, sorrow, nor mourning. In Jesus Christ, suffering becomes the way to joy, peace, and life.

But with suffering also comes temptation. Everyone who suffers is tempted. Even Jesus is tempted. The temptation is to flee rather than embrace our cross, which is our suffering, whatever that may be in each of our personal lives – sickness, injustice, poverty.

Whatever we suffer, we do not know what others suffer. As the great spiritual says, “Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. Nobody knows but Jesus.” We know our own suffering. We see and hear of others’ suffering and we suffer with them because we love them. That’s what it means to be compassionate – to “suffer with.”

Be compassionate and do not fall into the temptation regarding the sufferings of others as less than your own sufferings. That’s another judgment we are not fit to make. It is Jesus who knows. God knows. He alone is the truly compassionate one who truly knows and embraces our passion in his passion.  

We must not try to compare ourselves with others. This comparison, because we cannot see into the hearts of others like Jesus can, only serves to increase our own suffering and diminish our compassion for others. It is utterly useless. Abandon it readily as soon as the temptation to compare appears.

God alone sees and knows everything, even everything that we hide within our hearts. The mysteries we ponder there, the sinful thoughts we think, the doubts, and the faith. He is there with us through all of that.

He is with the really real you. The you that you show no one else. The you that is stripped of all its masks. The you that you would never bring to church. As well as the you that is so self-sacrificial, loving, and noble, that, if others saw it, they would tremble in awe in your presence. But others do not see. God alone sees your heart. Remember that nothing but nothing is hidden from him.

He is with you. Now and always and forever and unto the ages of ages. He. Is. With. You.

It does not matter what I think of you. It does not matter what your fellow parishioners think of you. It does not matter what your friends and family think of you. Whether we think you're a saint or a wretch. It is God who knows your heart.

Jesus knows what we're thinking, so let us be faithful to him.

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[i] Divine Names, vii

God has become our neighbor

The lawyer looks for justification in the letter of the law. I’ll spoil the surprise for you right at the beginning – he’s not gonna find it there.

He knows the law as well as Jesus, insofar as it is written and they have both read it.

We have all read it as well, I hope. The law we’re talking about here is the Torah, which is the first five books of the Bible. If you have not yet read them all, read them! Somewhere along the line, it got out that we Catholics don't read the Bible – but our own saints would beg to differ.  St. Jerome, for example, admonishes us to exercise and feed our minds daily with Holy Scripture. “May your hands never set the Holy Book down,” he says. We should read on even into the night, he says. “Let sleep find you holding your Bible, and when your head nods let it be resting on the sacred page.” Well, anyway, read it!  We are not illiterate any longer, most of us. That was our only excuse for not reading scripture. If we can read, that is first of all so that we can read the scripture, which God has given us. When Jesus asks the lawyer, “What is written in the law?” the answer should be as ready on our lips as it is on the lawyers.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might." That’s from Deuteronomy  (6:4-5). And “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s from Leviticus (19:18). It also says in Leviticus that those who keep the commandments of the Lord shall live (18:5).

What is necessary for life is love of God and neighbor. For everlasting life, what is necessary is love of God above all with your whole heart, soul, strength, and mind and love of neighbor as of yourself. Love is what is needed. This is the true center and purpose of the law. Love – not attention to detail – Love – not cleverness – Love – not a great memory – Love.

We don’t enter into life even by fighting evil – but by love. St. Porphyrios says “You don’t become holy by fighting evil. Let evil be. Look towards Christ and that will save you. What makes a person saintly is love.” Anyway, you can’t drive the darkness out of a room by arguing with it or by waving your fists around. The only way is to turn on the light. Only love – and not vain energy, effort, will, or struggle – can fill our hearts with light and give us life. Stop trying to fight and instead Love himself reign over your heart. Anyway, if it came down to fighting, he’s the only one who could win the fight anyway. Only grace will save us, not our effort. Only love.

So the lawyer knows these words about love. He’s read the sacred page, at least. It’s a start. But his approach to the words is all wrong. He tries to twist the ambiguity that words have to justify his own lack of love. “Who is my neighbor?” He asks.

Words are ambiguous, but being clever about words and attentive to detail will not give us life. That may be the way out of an earthly prison when we’ve committed a crime and come before a human judge – to find some loophole or ambiguity in the law that’s gonna get us off the hook.  But it is not so with God.

The lawyer seems to imagine that if he can just define "neighbor" in a way that excludes all those to whom he has not been neighborly, he’ll escape the judgment. Perhaps that is a way to escape the judgment of men, but the Lord sees our heart. His parable of the Good Samaritan cuts right through the confusion about words that the legalist tries to introduce. While legalism darkens truth, our Lord is the light and the life.

It turns out that the lawyer already knows the truth. We all already know, if we are honest and examine our hearts, that we have sometimes been unloving. When Jesus asks him at the end, "Who, in your opinion, was the neighbor to the man who fell in with the robbers?" The lawyer is able to answer, "The one who treated him with compassion." We already know the truth of it, and we're not going to hide it from the Lord. We do not love him as we should. We do not love one another as we should.

How often do I hear someone say in confession, "I have been unloving?" Not very often, I can tell you. Yet this is the only sin – the sin behind every sin. Failure to love. Lack of love. If we were just to confess being unloving, we will have confessed every possible sin we may have committed by that one word. Then, we can go into the particulars of how we have failed to love without any anxiety about forgetting something. Love – and not a particularly good memory – is what gives us life. If we were loving, we would not sin. It is the light that casts out the darkness.

The Good Samaritan is a model of love and compassion. This story pricks our consciences – and rightly so. We ask ourselves, are we the Priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan? Have I neglected my neighbors or shown them compassion?

What we need to realize is that, really, we are the man half dead on the road. We are half dead because we are unloving, or not as loving as we should be, and that is death and darkness in us. We are immortal spirits and mortal bodies – half dead and half alive. Alive as immortal creatures of God and doomed to die due to our sins. And who is the Good Samaritan really? Above all, he is Jesus. Jesus is the one who shows perfect mercy, love, and compassion.  He is our God and has become our neighbor. Let us love him who first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Love the Stranger as Yourself

The Hospitality of Abraham,
Constantinople, late 14th century

A lawyer – that is, a scholar of Torah – asks Jesus what he has to do to live forever (Luke 10:25). Life forever is what Jesus offers, so how do we get it? It's a fair question. Well Jesus says to the man, you already know. Really he says, “What does it say in the law?” (Luke 10:26). You already know Torah and the Torah comes from the Father. The law is to be believed. The answer is already there. And, indeed, the lawyer does know. And he quotes to Jesus the greatest commandment: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27; Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18).

I love this. In another place, another lawyer – to test Jesus – asks him, “What is the greatest commandment?” And Jesus gives him the answer (Matt 22:35-40). He was asking Jesus to test him – to see if he knew his Torah – to see if he was really up to snuff. Because if he was who he said he was, then this is something he should know. This is something that the Pharisees and scholars of the law knew, which is made clear today when the roles are reversed and it is Jesus asking the question and the lawyer answering. Of course, Jesus does know what the Pharisees and lawyers already know. But he also knows more than they do.

Then, desiring to justify himself, the lawyer says to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10:29). This is something that Jesus knows but the lawyer doesn’t – and it’s something we also forget. He knows who our neighbors are. And he tells the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate the point – that our neighbors are not to only those of our own people, or our own country, or political party, or our own religion – that our neighbors include foreigners and heretics and heterodox and our enemies and – to me this is in a way even more startling – strangers. Strangers are our neighbors. 

Today, many in this country are looking at their neighbors, most of whom are strangers, as enemies because of how they voted. As Brother Isaac said recently, “Politics divide. Love in Christ unites!” He advises us, and I think we should listen:

Do something kind for a stranger today.

If you are happy about the results of the election, do something kind for a stranger today.

If you are sad or angry about the result of the election, do something kind for a stranger today.

If you are ambivalent about the result of the election, do something kind for a stranger today.

Our lens is always the Empty Tomb![1]

Love of strangers is a path to healing and even resurrection. The way to eternal life is love of God and neighbor. And Jesus reveals to us today that strangers are our neighbors. Love them.

“Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong.” Everything love is not sounds like a description of our political landscape, doesn’t it? “But love rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Cor 13:4-8).

The Good Samaritan loved his neighbor and he was a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers (Luke 10:36-37). Even though the man was probably a Jew coming from Jerusalem – and Samaritans and Jews were at enmity with one another for both religious and ethnic reasons (Luke 10:30). And furthermore, the man was a stranger to him. It seems they never spoke – before, during, or after. But the Samaritan had compassion on him (Luke 10:33). And he loved him.

It's clear how much he loved him by the extent of inconvenience to which he was willing to subject himself for him. The Samaritan was on his own journey, but he leaves behind his own priorities to seek the good of the other even at significant personal expense of both time and money, tending the man's wounds with oil and wine and bandages, carrying him on his own beast to an inn, and paying the innkeeper two day's wages to see to the man's care (Luke 10:33-35). All this for a stranger.

When we are busy and distracted with pressing concerns, it can be easy to justify ourselves, as the lawyer did, telling ourselves that “we gave at the office” or that we will help a stranger next time, but this time we’re too busy with “matters of consequence.”[2] Well, bear in mind whose voice is actually justifying our neglect. Metropolitan Kallistos teaches us a way to distinguish between the voice of the devil and the voice of the Lord: the devil always says, “yesterday” or “tomorrow,” but the Holy Spirit always says “today.”[3]

Pious Christians laudably expend much energy in avoiding sin and not giving into temptation. Unfortunately, the habit of not giving into impulses sometimes seems to get transferred to good desires too. If you’re tempted to give, go ahead and give into it. Never resist the urge to give. Don’t avoid the eyes of strangers for fear that you’ll be tempted to give them something. Be as reckless with your kindness as you are neptic with your anger. Love both those that make you angry and those that inspire you to give – both your enemies and strangers. 

An enemy is often someone we already have strong feelings about – so they’re often on our minds – while strangers are people we're often hardly aware of. Many of us often make small decisions to avoid being troubled by strangers. A decision to look the other way as we pass them on the street. Especially if it's apparent that they're going to ask us for something – probably money – probably for drugs.

I have never come across a person stripped and beaten on the road left for dead. It's an extreme example that Jesus gives us. He likes those. I have often come upon someone with a need that I recognize. If somebody's coming up to you asking for money, let me tell you, they are in need. There's a probability that they're not in need of that which they seek. But they are in need. And to turn away from that need is unloving of the stranger. And Jesus reveals to us today is that the stranger is our neighbor.

If you have ever turned away from a person in need because you were in a hurry to get to your job or to some other obligation or pleasure – and I confess that I have – ask yourself, how would you have responded to their need if they were a loved one? Would you have turned from them if it was your son or your daughter or your husband or your wife? Would you have turned away from them if you loved them?

Jesus reveals to us today that the stranger is our neighbor. And the greatest commandment tells us to love our neighbor.

Maybe you shouldn’t always give people what they are asking for. Many people argue that persuasively, though at the same time don’t forget that Jesus says to “give to everyone who begs from you” (Luke 6:30).

Give to everyone who begs from you. Maybe don’t give everyone money, but give to them what they do need. Give your shirt also to the one who takes your coat (Luke 6:29). Give drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, coats to the freezing, kindness and patience to strangers. And give love to all your neighbors, whether or not they’re from your neighborhood.

Even if your church’s neighborhood is not your neighborhood, the strangers who live all around it are still your neighbors. Even if your job is far from home, all those around you at work are your neighbors, even if they voted the other way. If you go out to eat, your servers and the jerks in the parking lot are all your neighbors. Jesus has revealed to us that our neighbors are not only our own people, but everyone – not only нас, but all. 

Loving our neighbors is part of loving God. Our Holy Father John Chrysostom, whose feast is today, is often quoted as saying that if you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find him in the chalice.

And that extends also to everyone you meet, I believe. The image of God is in every person and that image is wholly lovable, however obscured it may be. Everyone wants to be loved by all, no matter what they say defensively, because they have been hurt.

Wanting to be loved is not a weakness. Even God wants to be loved and God is not weak. God wants to be loved and he takes the guise of the stranger. As you love strangers, that is how you love God. Remember when three strangers came to Abraham and how he ran out to meet them and bowed before them, washed their feet, and fed them bread cakes and milk and curds, and killed for them the choice calf (Gen 18:2-7). Only after did he realize he was showing hospitality to angels and to God himself. These three – men or angels – are our image of the Trinity, famously painted by Rublev. And at first they were strangers.

God, the only true Lover of us all, alone fully deserves love. But we are made in His image, and as such we also desire to love and to be loved by all, even strangers. Do unto strangers as you would have them do unto you. Love strangers as you would have them love you. Love the stranger as yourself.

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[1] Br. Isaac Hughey’s Facebook Page. Accessed November 9^th, 2016. 

[2] Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince, chapters 7 and 13.

[3] Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia (Ware), Discovering the Inner Kingdom, (Oakwood Publications, 1997), 9. 

I have compassion on the crowd

On Matthew 14:14-22

The Feeding of the Five Thousand; Jesus Walking on the Water

from an Armenian Gospel book, 1386

black ink and watercolors on paper

bound between wood boards covered with dark brown kidskin

Getty Museum

“I have compassion on the crowd.” Jesus saw the five thousand men, the probably twenty thousand people, the great throng, and he had compassion on them, and healed their sick and satisfied their hunger. In the parallel stories of Jesus feeding the four thousand, he again has compassion on them and on that occasion, he actually says, “I have compassion on the crowd.” I heard a preacher once who would begin his sermons this way. Looking out at the gathered crowd he would say, “I have compassion on the crowd.” It strikes me as bold of that preacher to identify himself so closely with Jesus in this way. On the other hand, we are to be like Jesus in this way.

The word compassion comes from Latin and it means to suffer with. To feel the others’ pain. It’s a good translation of the Greek here, but it’s an abstraction of something more physical, fleshly, and poetic. The meaning of the Greek word here seems alien to us. I even find it difficult to say: σπλαγχνίζομαι, which we translate as “compassion”, more literally means to be moved as to the bowels. Where we would sometimes refer to the heart, the ancients refer to the bowels, which they regard as the seat of the more intense emotions. In other words, to feel it in your gut.

Like when sometimes we wince ourselves when we see our children fall and scrape their knees. We know what that feels like. So when we see someone else – especially someone we love – experience that pain, the memory of it is sharp – we can almost feel it ourselves.

And there is no more beautiful image of compassion than that of a nurturing mother toward her newborn baby, crying again in the night. She can almost feel his hunger and is driven by it from her own sleep and her own comfort again and again to comfort the helpless baby.

When we love someone, their pain hurts us too. This is the opposite of sadism or schadenfreude, which is taking pleasure at the pain or misfortune of others. We sometimes mistake the pleasure that someone gives us for love, but true love is not just a gushy feeling. Love must include compassion. This means that there isn’t going to be any such thing painless love in this life – not until that blessed day when we will see our loved ones in a heavenly Jerusalem, when the Lord “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, and neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore” (Rev 21:4). Only then will our love be painless.

Jesus himself, who has loving compassion on us, encounters death. He mourns. He cries. He feels pain. Today, Jesus’ love for the crowd is not painless. One verse prior to today’s gospel reading, he had been attempting to withdraw from the crowds to a lonely place apart, to be alone to mourn, because he had just heard news that his cousin and baptist John was beheaded by Herod. Jesus, like any of us would, wanted to go and mourn his departed friend for a while in solitude. Jesus often went off to be alone, to rest, and to pray.

But finding a place to be alone in Galilee was no easy task. Josephus, the Jewish historian, claims that Galilee was densely populated at this time – with more than 200 towns, each with no less than 15,000 inhabitants. So that’s more than three million people in a small region. So it’s not too surprising that Jesus has a hard time finding a solitary place, and that the crowds from the towns quickly hear where he is and follow after him. Crowds tended to follow after Jesus, because great power went out from him and all were healed by that power. They would press in on him and try to touch him, because his touch and his presence was healing to all. This must have been exhausting for him, especially when he was overcome with his own grief. So Jesus seeks solitude and rest. He does teach us by example to care for ourselves as well as for others. He gets into a boat to escape the crowds - and then on the other shore there is another crowd of thousands waiting for him. How exasperating that must have felt. Some of us may have shouted, “Just leave me alone!”

But in addition to teaching us to care for ourselves, Jesus also teaches us to deny ourselves. And today, despite his exhaustion and despite his grief and despite his desire to be alone, he looks out at the great throng and sees their suffering, and he has compassion on them, and he heals their sick.

It must not have been easy for Jesus to add the pain of the multitude to his own pain. But that is what he does. He denies himself and takes up his cross and invites us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him.

Sometimes he calls us to set aside ourselves, our heartaches, our exhaustion, our obsessions, and to focus on the needs of others. This is sacrificial love offered in imitation of Christ.  He shows the crowd compassion, and then he invites us, his disciples, also to show them compassion.

The disciples were also aware of the people’s need. They too are capable of compassion and can feel the suffering and need of others. They see that it’s getting late and that the people will soon be hungry. They bring this concern for the people to Jesus, along with a suggestion that the crowds should go off and fend for themselves. This is a familiar story: when we see a need, our first response is often that someone else should do what’s necessary to provide for the need.

Feeling the others’ pain, sensing their need is the beginning, but not the end, of compassion. Jesus, by his own compassion, invites us to compassion. He says to the disciples, “They need not go away, you feed them.”

Jesus’ response here might remind some of us of what happens when we have a great idea for some service or activity that the parish ought to be providing. We take this idea to our pastor, only to hear him say, “Thank you for volunteering to lead the effort!” The needs that we can see are often the needs that Jesus is calling us to provide for.

But the disciples have only two fish and five loaves. It’s a meager offering, but they offer what they have.

The truth is, we really can’t do it alone. What we have to offer really isn’t enough. We really do need Jesus’ help. If I have compassion on the crowd, it is only inasmuch as I am in Christ and he is in me. The disciples offer what they have, but they need the power of Christ to take their poor offering and make it sufficient for the needs of the crowd.

Jesus takes the spark of compassion in the disciples and he multiplies it, when he says to them, you feed them. Jesus is a multiplier. He multiplies the five loaves and two fish and he multiplies our compassion. He shows us that love can grow. It isn’t ever necessary to run out of love.  Love is not like money. Love is not finite. Rather, paradoxically, you have what you give away.

So, whatever small and seemingly inadequate gifts we have to offer, these we offer together with our prayers to Christ for multiplication and he will make them grow to abundance. Not only will it be enough, there will be twelve baskets left over.