Urging the Lord – Maranatha!

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Isaiah 25:6-10; Matthew 15:29-37

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus healing the crowd and multiplying the bread to feed the hungry crowd. 

There is something so insightful about the crowd’s behaviour or character. 

The Gospel describes that when Jesus sat down on the mountain by the sea of Galilee, ‘great crowds came to him, having with them the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute, and many others.’ The passage also reads, ‘They placed them at his feet.’ 

The crowd’s behaviour is such that Jesus says, ‘My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, for they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat.’ 

In what the crowd does, it succeeds in moving the Lord to perform the multiplication of bread. 

It looks as if the crowd found so much joy and satisfaction in the presence of the Lord that it even disregarded the fact that it had been without food for three days. We don’t exactly know what makes the crowd continue to ‘stay’ with the Lord. However, it is by witnessing the ‘earnestness’ of the crowd that Jesus is moved, performs the cure, and feeds the multitude. 

Jesus is urged. Jesus is compelled. Jesus is moved by the crowd’s behaviour. 

Such was the ‘seeking’ that the crowd was characterized by. 

Jesus’ cure and feeding them come in response to the earnestness of those seekers. 

The season of Advent is about ‘urging’ the Lord, saying, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’

Let us pray for the grace to ‘urge’ the Lord so that when the Lord makes Himself present in our midst, we will enjoy the healing in delight and thankfulness. 

Maranatha!

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar