Summer Breezes

These are the days of summer. Even with our hot and humid weather in the Washington Metropolitan area, we long for some summer breezes. We long for some hilltop or ocean shore taking in a few cool and refreshing breezes. Just like the words of the song, “summertime...and the living is easy…,” the culture affords us time to slow down, if not in fact, we can at least dream of relaxing times.

Parallel to this summertime expectation of re-creation and renewing ourselves, in our spiritual life in the Church we have these Sundays in Green. These Sundays present us with the rhythm of prayers, readings, and hymns between the Easter Season and the time of Advent-Christmas. The name comes from the color of the liturgical vestments at our Sunday celebrations. “Green” suggests life and hope.

The liturgical readings give the primary dynamic of entering into this season of continued growth in the Spirit. Unlike the major seasons of the Liturgical Year, these readings are more gentle in their unfolding. Listeners within the Liturgy of the Word are offered a broad thematic and a gentle challenge in their spiritual lives.

So far this summer, our Sunday fare of readings has invited us to think and pray about the place of prophecy in the community, the call to discipleship, the reconciling role of Christ in the mystery of redemption, the invitation to the feeding and nurturing of believers within the community, the need for taking time aside in our lives as disciples. Metaphors suggested relying only on God and not on our own resources.

Being and Doing
Just this past Sunday, the invitation to us through the disciples returning from their first mission experience was to take some time apart and to rest. They had just been sent to do the works of the Kingdom. They had been urged to take nothing for the journey. They had confidently brought their message and peace to those who received them. Otherwise, they had moved on. Most likely they had experienced some success in the work entrusted to them by Jesus, but also some confusion at seeming failure or rejection by people along the way. They had done many things. Many new experiences had been theirs. After all the “doing,” they re-encounter Jesus. His

suggestion is a little “being.” Mark’s gospel said they were so busy, as was Jesus, that there wasn’t time even to eat.

Jesus offers them time to “unpack” their experiences. “Come by yourselves to an out-of-the-way place and rest a while.” They would grow in relationship with the Lord, not only by doing more, but by being in this presence. The people, the crowd, insisted and pressed on Jesus and his disciples. By the time Jesus arrives, the “deserted place” is not at all deserted, but filled with people.

The gentleness, which the Lord had shown with his enthusiastic, but fatigued, disciples, continues in his encounter with the crowds. He looks on them with pity, “for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” He cares for them, not so much by normal food, but he “began to teach them at great length.” He offered them down time to be in relationship to him.

He gathers them, just like Jeremiah describes in the first reading and the psalmist in the responsorial Psalm 23. He feeds them with his word. He gives them repose. Refreshment is given them as cool running water. The “goodness and kindness” of God is theirs forever. The crowd comes into the dwelling place of the Lord’s presence.

Time to Eat and Drink
Often enough in the desert the Lord feeds his people. In Mark’s gospel, the feeding and nurturing is his teaching about the Kingdom in that they find rest and confidence. The disciples had been invited to go away to an out-of-the-way place, but the whole crowd took up the invitation. The disciples had been advised to find a little rest. In the end, the disciples and all the people find refreshment and rest in Jesus’ teaching. On the journey they find together that a table had been set and overflowed with all manner of good things.

Summertime and Sundays in Green invite all of us to take some time and space out-of-the-way. Is there some time these days to allow the Lord to look at us with pity, to feed us, to teach us on the way to the Kingdom? To take in these breezes we needn’t go far. We are invited to go within ourselves and allow the Lord to be our Shepherd.

CDH