Jesus was a man among the people. He is God become man and come to save us. And so he dwelt among us – he spent time among us – he was present to us. This is an important model of ministry – but every bit as important is something that he does today.

After much time among the people – teaching, preaching, and feeding the five thousand – Jesus dismisses the crowds (Matt 14:13-22). He dismisses them and goes by himself up the mountain to pray (14:23). He even sends away his closest disciples – telling them to go before him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. There is much to learn from this, I believe.

Some of us like to be always among people – or at least among friends. These extroverts are inspired and energized by the company of others. And they quickly get lonely and long for companionship if left alone. Others of us prefer to be alone. More introverted, these find energy and inspiration in times of solitude. And they are emotionally drained by being too much around people.

But whether we’re introverted or extroverted, and whether we consequently seek God more readily in silence or in our neighbors, I think we must learn from Jesus the need for both of these aspects of our lives. He teaches us that when we pray, we ought to go into our inner chamber, shut the door, and pray in secret so as not to make a show of our prayer (Matt 6:5-6). He also teaches us that whatsoever we do to the least of his brethren that we do unto him (Matt 25:40, 45), which means that serving others, attending to their needs, and spending time with them is also a means of prayer – of communing with Christ our God. And Jesus models both of these behaviors himself – both ministering to the people and taking his leave of them to spend time in undistracted prayer with his father.

I believe it is important for us to imitate Christ in both of these ways.

Even if we prefer to be alone, we should also devote some of our time to working out God’s mercies among his people – feeding the hungry, consoling those who grieve, visiting the sick, defending the faith, and in all those countless ways God has given us to love one another – face to face and heart to heart with one another – with the image of God in each other person.

And, on the other hand, times of solitude with God are also essential, even if we prefer the company of the crowd or our friends and even if we get uneasy when we’re alone – when anxieties soar & restless thoughts and passions disturb us – even waking us up in the middle of the night.

My mother used to say that, if you wake up in the middle of the night, it is because the Lord wants you to pray. The middle of the night can be a good time to be alone with God. My father therefore, who woke in the middle of most nights with anxiety, would pray, “What are you doing, Lord, waking me up in the middle of the night?”

The Lord’s purposes are not always discernable to us and it is good, I believe, to be frank with him.

Sometimes, he just wants to be with us.

I once heard a story of a young man who, after some time away, returned to his father’s house to borrow some money. His father greeted him joyfully and quickly agreed to give him the desired sum. ‘But first,” he said, “come in and sit with me and talk for a while.” And so the son came in and they went to the sitting room and sat and spoke with each other for a while. After some time had passed, the son again brought up the question of the money. The father said, “Yes, yes, of course, but now it’s time for dinner. First, let us eat together.” And so the son agrees and they go into dinner together and they eat and drink and talk. And after dinner, the father suggests that it is getting late and that perhaps the son would like to stay for the night. At this point, the son becomes irritated with his father and says, “why do you keep delaying? Why don’t you give me the money as you agreed?” The father answers, “My son, of course I will give you the money and whatever else you desire, but I love you and it has been so good to see you and to be with you, and I don’t want you to go.”

Sometimes God just wants to be with us. Don’t go to the Lord our Father only when you need something, but make time every day simply to be with him – to dwell consciously in his loving presence.

There is nothing more intimate than this time alone with God. You will never see an icon of Jesus praying alone on the mountain. There are many modern paintings of this theme, but no icons, as far as I have seen. How can we depict Jesus alone with his father? It is a scene of unutterable intimacy, not to be looked at. The same is true of your time alone with God.

Even if it is difficult for us, we must devote some time daily, I believe, to being alone with God. We must find some moment of silence in which the still small voice of the Lord may be heard over the din of the thousands and millions and billions of distractions that vie for our attention, especially in our ever noisier technological world with the endless beeping of our “distraction machines”[i] which call for attention and away from attending to the one thing that matters – to the voice of God, which, came to Elias upon the mountain not in the wind, and not in the earthquake, and not in the fire, but as a still small voice (1Kings 19:11-12).

To hear this voice, both Elias and Jesus went up the mountain alone to pray. The Lord wishes to speak to each of us also and we too must seek a quiet place if we are to hear him. I assure you, if Jesus and Elias need to do this, we need to do this as well. None of us are above this need.

“For what purpose does [Jesus] go up … the mountain?” St. John Chrysostom asks. “To teach us that solitude and seclusion are good, when we are to pray to God.… We find [Jesus] continually withdrawing into the wilderness. There he often spends the whole night in prayer. This teaches us earnestly to seek such quietness in our prayers as the time and place may afford. For the wilderness is the mother of silence; it is a calm and a harbor, delivering us from all turmoil.”[ii]

Speaking of turmoil, what is happening while Jesus is alone praying on the mountain? All night, his disciples row against the wind in toil and turmoil in the sea (Matt 14:24). Then, in the fourth watch of the night – that is, just before dawn – Christ returns from his time alone with his father and he walks on the stormy water to his disciples (14:25).

I don’t think his walking on water is unrelated to his time alone with his father on the mountain. The mountain is like heaven and the sea is like the world. We must spend some time on the mountain if we are to weather the storms of the sea – if we are to be able to rise above the waters of this life forever threatening to drown our faith, our hope, our love for God and one another in so much evil and emptiness. Only by going occasionally to the mountain to pray alone can we keep the faith needed to walk on water.

If Jesus needs periodically to pray alone, so much more do we need to do the same. To maintain connection to God in the midst of this sea of distraction and turmoil, to know inner peace even as strife rages all about us, seems impossible. It is like walking on the windswept water of the sea.

In Christ, all things are possible (cf. Matt 19:26; Mark 10:27; Luke 1:37; Phil 4:13).

 

 

---

[i] Tim Wu, “How Today’s Computers Weaken Our Brain,” The New Yorker

[ii] John Chrysostom, The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 50.1.”

Notice how Jesus works through his apostles.

He could have easily fed the multitude himself with bread from heaven. He could have rained down manna upon this great throng in a lonely place as he did upon the Israelites in the wilderness. He is himself the bread from heaven (John 6:32-35). But note that he does not say to his disciples, “I will feed them.” Rather, he says, “you feed them.”[*] “They need not go away; you give them something to eat” (Matt 14:16).

Certainly, it is Jesus and Jesus alone who works the miracle that makes it possible to feed thousands of people with five loaves and two fish (Matt 14:17-21). All four gospels record this miracle. It is so astounding and full of meaning that none could skip over it.

It is a testament to the divinity of Jesus Christ. It identifies him with the God of Israel who feeds his people in the wilderness. It is surely a divine work and not the work of humans acting on their own.

But still, Jesus chooses to carry out this work through his disciples. Still, he identifies their work with his by saying, “you give them something to eat.”

When he said that, he already knew they would have only five loaves and two fish. This is Jesus we’re talking about. He knows everything. Yet still he tells them to give the crowds something to eat. He knew they would require his help. Yet he still wanted to make it their work and not his alone.

Through these ministrations of the disciples, Jesus works his great and compassionate miracle of feeding the multitude. This signifies that it is through the apostles and their successors that God will make himself present to his people in every age.[†]His disciples bring him the five loaves and the two fish. And after he blesses them and breaks them, he gives the loaves to his disciples and the disciples give them to the crowds. And after all have eaten and are satisfied, the twelve disciples pick up the twelve baskets full of broken pieces left over (Matt 14:18-20).

So, if you want a religion or a spirituality that doesn’t require working with and through other people, then you don’t want to follow the way that Jesus has shown us. He gives us one another. He ministers to us through one another.

As an example of this, there was a former practice in the ancient Church, at least in some places, that even a bishop would always receive the eucharist from a concelebrant. Nowadays, we priests place the body of Christ in our own hands, but this was not always the case. And, when the bishop is here, you’ll notice that he gives me communion in the same way as you see me give the deacon communion. This testifies to the truth that, no matter what our role or order is, God gives us himself to us through one another.

How then are we to participate in this self-giving of God to one another?

Jesus shows us the way. After his disciples bring him the five loaves and two fish, the first thing Jesus does is look up to heaven. He does this by way of giving us example. As St. Cyril of Alexandria says, “He himself is the one who fills all things, the true blessing from above and from the father.” Yet, even though he is the blessing, “he looks up to heaven as though asking for the blessing from above.”[‡]  He does this for our sake – toteach us by example – in his humanity – how to act as his ministers over the things he has given us.

We are all stewards of some part of his creation. Each of us has something he has given us to care for and to be used for the good of his people. We all have some small gift to give, rather like the five loaves and two fish. When we give it, he will multiply it and make abundant what was insufficient.

What we must do, first of all, when deciding what to offer and how to offer it, and before we offer it, lest we squander it, we must, like Jesus, look up to heaven. We must remember the source of every good thing. We must keep our minds and our hearts and our attention fixed there.[§] We must practice an awareness of the heavenly Kingdom to which we are called and in which we live even now inasmuch as we are looking up to heaven over and about everything we have to consider.

How many of us, when we are giving something, think that we are giving it from ourselves? Do I say to myself, “I am so generous,” as I place my offering in the basket? Or, worse, “now they owe me something”?

The truth is, whatever we give to anyone is actually from the Lord. It belongs to him. “Lend without expecting repayment,” our Lord teaches us (Luke 6:35). This makes a lot of sense only when we remember that whatever it was that we lent actually belonged to the Lord all along. All things are his and he has made us stewards of his creation.

So, let us give to one another cheerfully and without holding back – as icons of God’s generous outpouring of grace. Let us give to each other as Jesus gives food to the thousands. Let us give abundantly. If we give begrudgingly or with the expectation of getting our own way in return, then we darken and obscure the image of our generous God, which yearns to shine from within us.

Today, he gives us example of how we are to share what we have with all and in common. Note that the disciples give each person the same food. Some are not getting grilled swordfish while others make do with boiled grass carp. From one and the same source all partake of the simple food until each is satisfied.

The worthy and the unworthy eat together there – the sinner and the saint – and Jesus alone knew which was which, and yet he gives to all the same. Judas was there with the other disciples, too. And there were twelve baskets to pick up at the end, one for each of the twelve apostles to bear, including Judas.[**]

There is to be no judging of who deserves what in the giving, but we are to give to all who ask and to all alike. If we are to follow the way of Jesus, we must become the ones through whom he nourishes and leads others. And we must also recognize with humility that he will nourish us and lead us through other people.

Going it alone will not get us there. It is not the way. The way is through and with each other. God is with us.

Through One Another

 

[*] “For he did not simply say, ‘I will feed them.’ The deeper significance of that would have not been easily understood. So what does he say? ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat,’ He did not say ‘I give them’ but ‘you give them’” (John Chrysostom. The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 49).

[†] “The loaves were given to the apostles, for through them the gifts of divine grace were to be administered” (Hilary of Poitiers. On Matthew 4.11).

[‡] Cyril of Alexandria, Fragment 178

[§] “He looked up to heaven that he might teach them to keep their eyes focused there” (Jerome. Commentary on Matthew 2.14.19).

[**] “For this purpose he also caused just twelve baskets to remain over: That Judas, too, might bear one. He wanted all the disciples to know his power” (John Chrysostom. The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 49.3)