Reflection for December 7
This Gospel of Matthew 9:35 conveys how Jesus was “moved to pity” when he traveled around the towns and villages and witnessed great suffering among the people. Filled with compassion, He urged His disciples to do all they could do to relieve suffering because “so many people were troubled and abandoned.”
Fast forward to modern-day America, when most of us have plenty to eat, the blessing of good health, and families that love us. But if we really open our eyes and see with our hearts, it’s impossible not to recognize the suffering that still surrounds us: poverty, homelessness, violence in the streets, school shootings, and innocent children starving in the Gaza peninsula.
This gospel reminded me of a book I recently received for Father’s Day entitled Seeing with the Heart (available in the bookstore). The author, Fr. Kevin O’Brien, cited the childhood classic, The Little Prince, in which the author proclaimed that the “only way to see clearly is with the heart.” He then recounted the following examples:
Fr. Greg Boyle, who founded Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation program in the world.
Pope Francis, who said he preferred a Church that is “bruised, hurting, and dirty because it has been out on the streets.”
The psychiatrist, Victor Frankl, who after surviving a Nazi death camp concluded that “love (seeing with the heart) is the ultimate and highest goal.”
Although not mentioned in the book, I hasten to add Fr. Rick Frechette, the Passionist priest and physician, who has spent 30 years in Haiti serving the “wonderful and hard-working people” under dangerous, poverty-stricken, and gang-infested conditions.
And one last example that especially touched me – in 1968, when Robert F. Kennedy lay dying, the victim of an assassin’s bullet, he asked the 17-year-old hotel busboy, Juan Romero, who was cradling his head, “Is everybody okay?”
If Jesus were to visit our world today, would He still be moved with pity when He witnessed the suffering that surrounds us? We may be able to travel to distant planets, and create computers with artificial intelligence, but seeing with the heart is the only true path to a fulfilled humanity.
Jim Malley