The Lord Is My Chef Sunday Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B, 21 July 2024
Jeremiah 23:1-6 ><}}}}*> Ephesians 2:13-18 ><}}}}*> Mark 6:30-34

After being sent “two by two” last Sunday, the Apostles now return to Jesus, reporting “all they had done and taught.”  What a beautiful gospel scene this Sunday, supposed to be our day of rest that begins in God and must be rooted in God.

The apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported all they had done and taught.  He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”  People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat.  So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place (Mark 6:30-32).

Last Sunday we were reminded to rediscover the family and friends sent with us “two by two” in this life while today the Lord wants us to be aware of our need to rest in order to rediscover Him first of all, then one’s self and others.

Unfortunately, many people today have entirely forgotten the meaning and importance of rest that we succumb to all kinds of sickness related with stress and fatigue. In fact, Filipino workers were recently ranked as the second worst in terms of work-life balance in a worldwide survey. One factor it cited is the lesser paid vacation leaves our workers have compared with their counterparts in other countries. 

Rest is not only stopping from work to be recharged like cellphone batteries; we are not things like robots and drones sent out simply for a task that once achieved, no more.  We are inter-related persons meant to form bonds and unity, a family and a community. That is the result of our being sent on a mission to share God’s creative works leading to our union in Him with others. 

God rested and made Sabbath holy after creation because He had completed all His works that were all good; we, on the other hand, merely participate in His creative works. That is why no matter how hard we push ourselves with our work, we can’t completely finish them as more things to do come along the way, making us bored or stressed out because we could no longer find life but simply routine. We have been so focused on accomplishing many things as if we are the savior of the world (messianic complex) that we feel so important, bloating our ego. That is when we start literally throwing our weight to those around us like in those reels of road rage. The sad part of this is how we eventually hurt the people we love and supposed to serve like the shepherds of the Old Testament that God through Jeremiah had accused to have “misled and scattered” the people of Israel (Jer.23:1).

Today, Jesus is inviting us to “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while (Mk.6:31)” to remind us that in everything we do in this life, what matters most is not the task but us, the persons we love and care for, and Christ who is our only fulfillment in life. 

Like the apostles, we have to return to Jesus precisely because our mission, our work is not ours but Christ’s. We need to return to Jesus every Sunday in the Eucharist when we are nourished by His words and strengthened by His Body and Blood to sustain us in our mission.

Rest is neither doing nothing like sleeping all day or doing anything we like that we forget God and in the process, our very self and others. Rest is a time of conversion when we lay aside our plans and agenda by returning to God so that we could have focus again in this life. Rest is actually to be filled with God, to be holy.

This we find expressed perfectly in our Filipino word for rest which is pahinga from the root hinga or breath that is spiritus in Latin. To rest in Filipino is mag-pa-hinga that literally means hingahan, to be breathed on. Genesis tells us how God breathed on man to be alive after creating him while in John’s Gospel we find Jesus breathed on His apostles after greeting them with peace twice on the night of Easter when He appeared to them at the Upper Room. From here we get that beautiful imagery of rest as being breathed on by God – mag-pa-hinga sa Diyos – which is to be closer with God!

Here now is the challenge and best part of the good news this Sunday: the more closer we get to God in Jesus and through Jesus especially on Sunday our day of rest, the more we must get closer with others. The more we pray, the more we rest in the Lord, the more we serve, the more we love.

Mark told us how Jesus invited the Twelve to “come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while” but the people saw them and even got earlier to the other side of the lake!

When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd and he began to teach them many things (Mark 6:34).

Rest is more than the amount of time spent “resting” but the disposition to be with the Lord, to be one with Him that we become holy like Him. That moment when Jesus led the Twelve to rest was already a “rest” for Him that resulted in serving more the people who have followed them.

Jesus being moved with pity for the people indicated His rest and communion with the Father expressed in His oneness with the suffering people who were like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus has always been one with the Father right from the very start until His death on the Cross where He declared “It is finished” and commended His total self to the Father.

The truest sense of us having a real rest, of getting closer with God is when we get closer with others especially those entrusted to our love and care like our loved ones and those who are poor and sick.

Problem these days among us priests including laypeople is our wrong idea about rest; we do not really rest at all but simply indulge in pleasures that are many times scandalous for being godless and unmindful of other people. True rest makes our hearts natural to be aware of the sufferings of others, to be one with them or at least take their plight into consideration in our rest.

We can only say “mission accomplished” to rest when we are one with God through others that St. Paul explains in the second reading at how Jesus Christ reconciled us all through the Cross, “putting an enmity to death by it” (Eph. 2:16). Next Sunday, this we shall see when after teaching and healing the people in that deserted place, Jesus would feed the crowd of over 5000 people from just a few loaves of bread and pieces of fish.

Let us rest in the Lord to prepare our hearts and souls as well as our tired body to be filled with God so we can fill others too with Him. Let us pray: 

Lord Jesus Christ,
we live in a highly competitive world
of 24/7 wherein everyone is so busy
that we forget You and the persons 
You have entrusted to us;
remind us we are not the Messiah
nor a superhero to save the world;
we can only do as much in this life
as God had accomplished all for us
 in You, the Christ;
let us take two or three 
even five steps backwards 
to let You, Jesus,
do your work in us.
Amen.