Fr Paolo Consonni, MCCJ
Mk 6:30-34
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B
Gospel Reflection
“The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. Jesus said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while’”. (Mk 6:30-31)
Summer holidays have started and many students (and lucky adults) will have the opportunity to enjoy some well-deserved rest. This Sunday’s Gospel (Mk 6:30-34) shows Jesus encouraging the apostles to take some time off after their first experience of mission. After enthusiastically reporting to Jesus what they had said and done, Jesus might have noticed their tiredness. Hence, the invitation was to go to a quiet place, all by themselves, and rest.
In our hyperactive lifestyle, we consider rest a luxury. We might even feel guilty about resting. Yet the Bible, which never neglects or denies our authentic human needs, emphasizes the necessity of rest and its spiritual meaning from the very first pages. God rested on the seventh day after creating the world, and blessed and sanctified that time. (Gen 2:2-3). In the Book of Exodus, resting time has even become a commandment (Ex 23:12).
According to the Bible, rest is not only something we do to restore our physical energies. It is a time of reconnecting with God and revitalizing our relationships, especially with our family and friends. It is a sacred time in which we rediscover the place we have in God’s plan and reflect on the motivations behind our choices. No wonder that another English term for vacation is “holidays” (holy days)!
Even when we are alone in a solitary place, and especially when we are in a spiritual retreat, rest is always relational because Jesus’ presence is what regenerates our hearts and restores the wholeness of our fragmented lives: ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest’ (Mt 11:28).
Once I read a reflection by Fr. Luigi Giussani, telling young people not to forget that vacation is indeed a ‘free time,’ a time one can spend as one wishes and do something in total ‘gratuitousness,’ namely not because of a duty or for a material reward, like a salary or credits. What we do during our free time, when we are not compelled to do anything by external factors, clearly shows what we truly desire in life and mirrors the values we cherish in our hearts. If during our vacations we simply waste our time and spend it in a meaningless way, it means that we do not love our life. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happens to many of us. But despite this danger, it is not good to compel young people to join activities or to be productive during holidays because the aspect of ‘freedom’ must be protected and promoted if we want to discover with honesty what we truly care about.
For these reasons, vacations are an important time because they help you remember what inflames your heart, what makes your life precious, and what makes the world a good place in which to live and invest our energies. A trip abroad, contact with nature, sports, reading good books, or watching good movies—more time spent with important friends—but also some volunteering service, more prayer—all this, done in freedom and through conscious choices, opens our lives to a deeper dimension and enriches it.
In this regard, it is good to remember that good rest time never denies or represses reality and its demands. One of the greatest dangers of our modern era is considering ‘holidays’ as the only time worth living, the only one in which we are truly ourselves. The Christian way of resting should never lead us to this conclusion.
This Sunday’s Gospel makes this point. After arriving at what they thought was a deserted place to rest with Jesus, the apostles discovered that people from the neighboring towns had arrived ahead of them, on foot, looking for them. What to do in this situation? “Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things” (v. 34).
In those few hours of his “free time”, what was most precious in Jesus’ heart and what gave meaning to His life emerged with clarity: His compassion for the people. Consequently, He did not run away, He did not complain, nor did He angrily dismiss the crowd. With freedom, in awareness, He acted according to what He felt in the depth of His heart.
I guess the apostles did the same during this holiday with Jesus. They might not have rested much, but it definitely was an unforgettable vacation if we still remember it after two thousand years. And they surely returned to their normal life recharged and ready to enthusiastically continue their life journey with Jesus. What more could we ask from a holiday?
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