11th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

Ex 19:2-6a; Rom 5:6-11; Mt 9:36-10:8

Does God really care for His people? Does He love us personally, individually? Today’s readings reassure us that God indeed is the Compassionate One.

In the first reading, God reminds the people of Israel how He delivered them from the bondage of their oppressors. He carried them “up on eagle’s wings” because they were weak and defenseless. The Israelites represent today’s poor, the vulnerable, and all victims of injustice. These people are God’s “special possession”, very dear to His heart.

St. Paul, in the second reading, proclaims the magnitude of God’s compassion by underlining the supreme value of the sacrifice of Christ: Only in extraordinary circumstances is a person willing to die for someone else. Parents, for example, would protect their child from serious danger at the expense of their own life, but they would not do the same sacrifice for a stranger, much less for an enemy. It is precisely in this that God proves His love for humanity: His Son died for us while we were still sinners, while we were still enemies because of sin.

In the gospel, Jesus looks upon the troubled and abandoned crowd and is “moved with pity”. In the original Greek, the word used to describe Jesus’ sentiment is splagchnizomai, noun for the vital inner organs of a person – the stomach, heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and kidneys. In Biblical understanding, the entrails are the source of deep human emotions. Henceforth, the Lord’s feeling for the people is no ordinary pity. A more exact translation is that “Jesus had deep compassion”.

The crowds are “like sheep without a shepherd” – unattended, vulnerable and directionless. This difficult situation moves Jesus to send out laborers, the twelve apostles who will do the work that He performs. These ordinary individuals are empowered to do extraordinary works: To preach the Good News of salvation, to liberate people from the bondage of evil and sin, to heal the sick, and to bring the dead back to life. Normally, God would make use of human hands to provide relief to those who suffer.

God shares the work of shepherding, first and foremost, to priests and religious. In a special way, they are called and chosen to lead the people of God by serving bigheartedly and freely. Priests and religious must remind themselves regularly that their vocation exists for the world, for people, above all, for the poor, the sick and the unwanted. They received their callings without cost; they also are to serve without counting the cost.

The Lord’s ministry of compassion, however, is not confined to priests and religious; it belongs to all baptized Christians. All of us, no matter what our status in life is, are called to become shepherds of one another, responsible to one another’s happiness, well-being or salvation.

In the gospel, Jesus invites us to “ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for His harvest”. And so, let us continue to pray for more laborers, people who will give their lives for the service of God and the Church. May God make our hearts like the heart of Christ, one that feels deeply with the troubled and the abandoned!

One day as he began his daily prayer, a holy hermit saw passing by, a cripple, a mother begging for food for her pathetically malnourished child, and the victim of what must have been a very severe beating.

Seeing them, the holy man turned to God and said, “Great God! How is it that such a loving Creator can see so much suffering, and yet do nothing about it?

And deep within his heart he heard God reply, “I have done something about it. I made you.”

(The story is told by Jack McArdle in 150 More Stories for Preachers and Teachers)