June 18, 2023 Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Welcome Father Bernward Today’s Readings: Ex 19:2-6a | Romans 5:6-11 | Matthew 9:36—10:8

Occasionally the required readings make it difficult to prepare a homily, but today’s readings provide many possibilities - I didn’t go past the first sentence of the gospel.

Some scripture words are better left untranslated: Hebrew - amen, alleluia, abba. Greek - agape, metanoia.

The Greek verb, splagchnizomai, appears today and needs some unpacking. It sounds more like the German word gesundheit.

Splagchnizomai is a word that is not so familiar as metanoia or agape. It is more difficult to pronounce, but it is profoundly significant.

t is translated, “moved with compassion.” Or “pity”, but “pity” conjures up misunderstanding. We appreciate compassion, we do not appreciate pity. It is found twelve times and used only in reference to Jesus and his father, abba.

Let’s get right to the root of this familiar phrase, put on your Greek ears. The root noun splagchna means “entrails of the body - our guts”. Anatomically, splagchna is located from a few inches above our belly button to where our legs come together. Splagchna the place where gut-wrenching impels us to act.

Splagchnizomai appears in all three synoptic Gospels. Translated, it is an English phrase that is so familiar, it may go unheard. A few examples to refresh our memories – the first is from today’s Gospel:

Mt 9 36 “At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with compassion.”

14: 14 “When he disembarked and saw the vast throng, his heart was moved with compassion and he cured their sick.”

Mk 8:2 “My heart is moved with compassion for the crowd. By now they have been with me three days and have nothing to eat .”

1:4 “Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and said: “I do will it. Be cured.”

Lk 7:13 “The Lord was moved with compassion upon seeing her and said to her, ‘do not cry. . . ‘”

Why my repetition of verses? To raise our consciousness of the frequency.

Divine compassion consoles us and makes it possible for us to face our sin because assimilating it can transform our broken, human condition from a cause of despair into a source of hope. The great miracle/ mystery is not Jesus’ miraculous cures themselves, but the infinite compassion that is the source of his deeds. John’s Gospel wisely calls what others call miracles or wonders “signs’ – signs of his compassion.

The heart of the matter? God is agape-love. Being more specific: God is compassion. The compassion of Jesus, love enfleshed, invites and

challenges us to enter the life of God himself.

We hope to be able to say with Paul [ga 2:20]: “I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me.” – in my heart, in my gut.

Compassion is not a skill, academics do not help, except to provide this small word-study. Compassion is not a virtue we exercise in special circumstances, not a noble act of charity; it is reminiscent of Rex Harrison - a “second nature” to us; it is like breathing out and breathing in. It is the natural way of being in our world as a Christian.

We engender a bond with each another because we share his life, his compassion. We live in solidarity with each other, and God lives in us. This is a dynamic understanding of “the mystical body of Christ.”

Jesus said, “be compassionate,” not “do compassionate things.” Compassion is not a category of doing; it is a category of being - like faith and hope. Abba is the source of it; Jesus is the model of it; we are the participants/inheritors of it.

Source: https://www.oblates.org/homily-helps-feed/eleventh-sunday-in-ordinary-time-june-18-2023 Image: ESUS MAFA. The Sermon on the Mount, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48284 [retrieved June 17, 2023]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).