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Jesus, no doubt, worked miracles. As a child, the first Biblical stories that stuck with me—and it’s probably true of you, too–were the stories of Jesus’ miracles. I would be fully content with skipping over his teachings just to get to the next story of a blind person seeing, a lame person walking, the calming of a storm, or the multiplication of the fish and loaves. Only as I got older did I realize the miracles of Jesus never stand on their own or else they would turn my faith into hero worship. Jesus hoped that the miracles, the signs and wonders he did, would point people beyond the miracles themselves to the truth about God’s Kingdom and what God was doing among us here and now. If the miracles are the bricks, then the teachings are the mortar that hold it all together.

One of the things we learn from Jesus’ teachings is that God is the compassionate one. Jesus didn’t just tells us about God’s compassion, he embodied God’s compassion by his actions. The gospel says, “As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; he had compassion for them…”

Let’s go back to the beginning of the story and see where this compassion comes from within Jesus and then see if it’s possible to access it in our lives.

The Apostles have returned from their first mission, and Jesus wants them to share with him what that experience was like. After their tour of duty, Jesus advise them to “Come away to a deserted place, all by yourselves and rest a while.” A deserted place is a place apart from the demanding crowd, a place where there is only God. Perhaps there they can debrief about the mission they had just been on and draw strength from God and God alone. But, like your life and mine, the best laid plans aren’t going to work out as hoped. While they get in a boat to go to this deserted place, the crowds follow them. The people’s feet are faster than the Apostles’ oars, and so when they get to the opposite shore, the people have already arrive and they were like sheep without a shepherd.

They are hungering for Jesus’ teachings. When Jesus sees them, his compassion surpasses his original plan for eating and resting is this deserted place. In the Greek (the original language of the Gospels), it’s even more dramatic. Compassion means his chest ripped open and his heart raced ahead to meet people in their need. The mission the Lord sent his Apostles on is continuing, seemingly without a break. The desert, where they are going to eat and rest, is not where food is normally found. The desert becomes the symbol of learning how to feed on God. Feeding on God, receiving divine energy, is what drives the mission forward. If the Apostles don’t learn to feed on God, they will surely experience burn out. This is not an easy lesson for them or for us as we are all susceptible to burn out.

Jesus has them get in a boat in order to cross over to a new way of thinking. This new way of thinking does not leave people–hungry people–behind. The people are not the problem. The problem is that in their busyness, they are neglecting the sustaining Source (God) in their lives. On the other shore, in this new consciousness, everything begins with compassion. The mission is rooted and sustained by divine compassion, and the Apostles must stay in touch with this compassion.

The thing about compassion, and I’m not telling you something you don’t already know, is that compassion can be very tiring. However, real compassion is not like pity. In the world of pity, we keep a safe distance from others and their endless neediness. Pity could mean giving someone money (our hard-earned money) but never asking a person their name. After a while, we get frustrated with their asking and inwardly think to ourselves, “I wish they would just leave me alone. I’m not a money tree!”

So while the Apostles don’t get much of a rest from the crowd—just a little time on the boat with the Lord—Jesus is about to teach them that compassion is a form of rest. The word compassion means “to suffer with”. (Passion means to suffer; the prefix “com” means with. Com + passion = to suffer with). When we try to be compassionate from a self-understanding of difference, we can quickly become worn out. We view ourselves as in a superior position and the other in a needy position. I’m always giving, and you’re always receiving, no wonder I’m exhausted. All our life we have been taught to use our differences to gain advantage. This “using our differences to our advantage” will help you win a gold medal at the Olympics, but it won’t help you grow spiritually. There is another way of thinking about it; this other way is the new consciousness, the new wine skins, Jesus is trying to give us. Instead of compassion being seen as superiority I have over you, Jesus suggests compassion must come from a self-understanding of sameness. When I stop seeing myself as superior (as the giver all the time), and start seeing you as my equal, then I move from pity to compassion. We can only be with the other when the other ceases to be “other” and becomes like me.

As a human being, Jesus was so much in touch with his own needs that he was able to recognize that he was no different than all the needy human beings he looked at. When we recognize our sameness, our actions come from a space of communion. As long as I see myself as the “have” and you as the “have not” I remain on the road to fatigue and burn out. However, when I take the time to hear your story, even a little part of it, I recognize we are all the same at the end to the day. Perhaps Fr. Richard Rohr says it more succinctly when he says, “Individualism makes compassion impossible.”

When we ground ourselves in our common humanity and when we ground ourselves in God, compassion is still hard work, but it’s a work that energizes us instead of draining us. The consciousness of this truth is a restful place where actions flow easily.

The rabbi addressed his students with the question, “When can you tell the night has ended and the day has begun?”

One of the rabbi’s students offered the reply: “When you can see a tree in the distance and tell if it is an apple tree or a pear tree.”

The rabbi answered, “No.”

Another student responded: “When you can see an animal in the distance and can tell if it is a sheep or a dog.”

Again, the rabbi said, “No.”

“Well,” his students protested, “When can you tell, that the night has ended, and the day has begun?”

And the rabbi responded, “When you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that he is your brother, that she is your sister—because if you cannot, no matter what time of the day it is, it is still night!”

~Fr. Phil