I’m not a crowd watcher, but I know someone who was.
Jesus—so the Gospels tell us—looked out into crowds often. He saw that they were like sheep without a shepherd, so he taught them. He was afraid they would faint on their way home after they had spent a couple days listening to him tell them about his Father, so he multiplied bread and fish for a meal. He cried as he looked out over the crowds filling the city of Jerusalem. And as he died on a cross between thieves, he looked through bloodied eyes at a crowd of onlookers who rejected him, seeking the source of their life elsewhere than beneath the Tree of Life.
Today the crowds are no different. Many people wander aimlessly, looking for meaning and purpose and truth. We hunger for bread and for the One who is Life, yet we are slow to come to the table where God is ready to feed us. We are distracted like the inhabitants of Jerusalem, mesmerized by screens, frightened by world events, numbed, spiritually searching for the One who graciously wants only to tenderly hold us in our suffering. And we, like those beneath the cross, often anxiously grasp for a life we can control rather than surrender to the Life who knows no end and who offers to us, too, a life that will have no end.
Many people responded to Jesus in his public life, following him, trusting him, turning to him when no one else could understand their need. As Jesus looked out over those crowds, he saw their hopeful and encouraging response, devotion, and tenacity. There were people in the crowds who filled his heart with consolation and delight.
As Jesus looked at the crowds of his time with great compassion and love, he also looks at us today with the same tenderness and mercy.
During the Paschal Triduum, a Daughter of Saint Paul thinks of crowds, the masses of people who are adrift, aimlessly milling about, at times fastening their attention on what can never satisfy them. Our hearts reach out to the countless people who are searching, longing, walking toward Jesus, hoping to find in him ultimate meaning.
As we reflect on the crowds today that Jesus gazes on, we Paulines focus first on those who produce media or scroll aimlessly through social media feeds or entangle themselves in the influences of media that lead them away from life, offering confusion and not consolation. We pray for people who have settled for something that promises a life it can never deliver. And we also pray for those who are producing films and books and social media that bring light and warmth and hope to people today in creative and amazing ways. We pray that all will find in the Eucharistic Heart of Christ the fulfillment of their deepest desires.
We Daughters of Saint Paul have been called to make reparation for the sins committed in the production and use of media. It’s our mission to use media to point people toward the way to Life and to help people use media in life-giving ways. Daily we pray for more producers of media who understand the human heart and who will open up before the “crowds” today artistic, cultural, and authentic horizons of ultimate Reality.
How do we make reparation when we ourselves are sinners? Our Founder, Blessed James Alberione, explained, “By offering the heavenly Father the most precious blood of Jesus Christ, by offering him the wounds of his Son, by making the very offering that Jesus Christ made of himself on Calvary.” Thirsting for souls as Jesus does, we pray, “Lord, in union with the priest who offers the Holy Mass, I offer myself, a small victim….”
When I was a child I used to think about how Jesus bore the wounds of my sins—humanity’s sins—wounds he bore 2000 years ago. This Holy Week, as I was praying , it occurred to me that since it is true that we are the Mystical Body of Christ, since he is our Head and we together are his members, then my … our … wandering and foolish seeking for Life in places and ways in which that Life can never be found, continues to wound the Body of Christ now. And instead, my … our … every move toward Jesus, toward Life, toward Truth, toward the only Way to the Father’s embrace—heals the wounds in his Body.
Before he ascended into heaven, Jesus sent his disciples out to the whole world to teach them where Life was to be found, to show them the way to unending Joy, to baptize them into his death so that they might rise with him. Then the crowds were no longer outside Jesus. He was uniting them to himself as he returned to the Father.
The Office of Readings presents an ancient text for Holy Saturday. It is an ancient homily that describes the Lord’s descent into the realm of the dead after his death on Calvary and before his resurrection. The text opens up for us the tremendous love of our Savior:
“‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person….
“‘Arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God.
“The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages.“
Jesus, this is what I want for the crowds today that mill about like sheep without a shepherd, hungry and fainting, needing a teacher, desperately searching for a source of Life that will satisfy their souls. We Daughters of Saint Paul are sent by you, Jesus, to the crowds in today’s world to bring this Joy of knowing we are so divinely loved.
I guess I am a crowd watcher after all, in a certain way. A crowd watcher in the style of Jesus, willing to die that others may live, to become, like him, bread broken for the life of the world.
Image credits: Young adults with cell phones: Betty Sayles via Pexels; Daughters of St. Paul; Duccio di Buoninsegna, Public domain in the United States, via Wikimedia Commons
