Getting ‘Personal’!

Saturday, February 10, 2024

1 Kgs 12: 26-32;13:33-34; Mk 8:1-10

In today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches the responsible way of asking questions. 

The famous passage on ‘Feeding the Four Thousand’ shows how Jesus’ compassion is more personal. 

We find Jesus moved with pity for the crowd that has been with him for three days and has nothing to eat. 

However, what often goes unnoticed is the responsible and personal manner in which he asks the question before multiplying the bread. 

When Jesus wants to feed the crowd, the disciples answer him, ‘Where can anyone get enough bread to feed all of them…?’ 

What deserves our attention is the impersonal way in which the disciples form the question. The phrase ‘Where can anyone’ has no room for someone to assume direct responsibility for the situation. 

In other words, this way of asking a question is to evade responsibility or to turn a blind eye to it without making any effort to check on the possibility, however insignificant it may be. 

Here is where Jesus intervenes, asking a very personal question. The question, ‘How many loaves do you have?’ redirects them to the possibilities that they otherwise ignore. 

Jesus shows that our care and concern for the needy humanity begins with a personal question and not with words that sound impersonal and escapist. 

When we get personal by asking, ‘What can I do?’ ‘What do YOU have?’ and ‘What do WE have?’ we imitate the wisdom of Jesus. 

Jesus shows that true charity is about getting personal. 

How ‘personal’ am I? 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar