Readings: 1 John 4:7-10; Mark 6:34-44
“His heart was moved with pity for them.”
We have, I think, a deep ambivalence about pity.
Saying that you pity someone can be taken
as an underhanded way of asserting your superiority.
And how many of us have heard people say,
or said ourselves,
“I don’t want your pity.”
We feel that to receive pity is demeaning;
to feel ourselves pitied is to feel shame.
And yet, don’t we also want
our suffering to be recognized?
Don’t we want others to grasp
what it is we are going through?
Don’t we want what we are going through
to move them in some way?
Is there a better way to put this than “pity”?
Perhaps we should call it “compassion”—
which literally means “to suffer with.”
We have, I think, a deep ambivalence about pity.
Saying that you pity someone can be taken
as an underhanded way of asserting your superiority.
And how many of us have heard people say,
or said ourselves,
“I don’t want your pity.”
We feel that to receive pity is demeaning;
to feel ourselves pitied is to feel shame.
And yet, don’t we also want
our suffering to be recognized?
Don’t we want others to grasp
what it is we are going through?
Don’t we want what we are going through
to move them in some way?
Is there a better way to put this than “pity”?
Perhaps we should call it “compassion”—
which literally means “to suffer with.”
But, whether we call it pity or compassion,
what is striking in today’s Gospel
is that this is what Jesus feels toward us.
He feels pity and compassion
because we are “like sheep without a shepherd.”
We wander in futility,
motivated less by purpose than by fear.
He feels pity and compassion
because we are hungry—
not necessarily physically hungry,
though he pities that as well,
but spiritually hungry for the bread of life.
He feels pity and compassion
because that is who he is:
he is the divine pity who comes to guide us,
God’s compassion made flesh to feed us.
“In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only-begotten Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.”
what is striking in today’s Gospel
is that this is what Jesus feels toward us.
He feels pity and compassion
because we are “like sheep without a shepherd.”
We wander in futility,
motivated less by purpose than by fear.
He feels pity and compassion
because we are hungry—
not necessarily physically hungry,
though he pities that as well,
but spiritually hungry for the bread of life.
He feels pity and compassion
because that is who he is:
he is the divine pity who comes to guide us,
God’s compassion made flesh to feed us.
“In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only-begotten Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.”
The saint we remember today, St. John Neumann,
like all the saints,
was made holy in giving himself over entirely
to this divine pity, this Godly compassion.
The saints know without shame
that they are saved by God’s pity,
and this knowledge allows them in turn
to live lives of divine compassion for others.
John Neumann, who spent a number of years in this area
ministering at St. Augustine’s in Elkridge
and St. Alphonsus here in Baltimore,
poured out his life
for the newly arrived immigrants to America,
who faced strong nativist prejudice
and anti-Catholic hostility.
Whether as a parish priest or as bishop of Philadelphia,
he sought nothing else but to lead lost sheep to Christ
and to feed them with the bread of everlasting life.
In his diary, he wrote the following prayer:
“My heart is pierced with sorrow
when I hear of the loss of one of my sheep.
Lord Jesus, have mercy.
Permit not that any one of those
whom you have entrusted to me should be lost.
O my Jesus, I will pray, fast, suffer,
and, with the help of your grace, sacrifice life itself.”
When he died in 1860, at only forty-eight years of age,
God welcomed home one whose life
was shaped by the pity of Christ,
who achieved great things
only because he knew himself to be
enfolded within the divine compassion
that has shown forth in Christ.
like all the saints,
was made holy in giving himself over entirely
to this divine pity, this Godly compassion.
The saints know without shame
that they are saved by God’s pity,
and this knowledge allows them in turn
to live lives of divine compassion for others.
John Neumann, who spent a number of years in this area
ministering at St. Augustine’s in Elkridge
and St. Alphonsus here in Baltimore,
poured out his life
for the newly arrived immigrants to America,
who faced strong nativist prejudice
and anti-Catholic hostility.
Whether as a parish priest or as bishop of Philadelphia,
he sought nothing else but to lead lost sheep to Christ
and to feed them with the bread of everlasting life.
In his diary, he wrote the following prayer:
“My heart is pierced with sorrow
when I hear of the loss of one of my sheep.
Lord Jesus, have mercy.
Permit not that any one of those
whom you have entrusted to me should be lost.
O my Jesus, I will pray, fast, suffer,
and, with the help of your grace, sacrifice life itself.”
When he died in 1860, at only forty-eight years of age,
God welcomed home one whose life
was shaped by the pity of Christ,
who achieved great things
only because he knew himself to be
enfolded within the divine compassion
that has shown forth in Christ.
May we too embrace
God’s pity and compassion,
and may God have mercy on us all.
