Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

When Jesus heard about the behead­ing of John the Baptist by Herod, he with­drew to a lonely place (Matt 14:13). Some have wondered why Jesus should run away. Was he afraid of being killed also by Herod? Why did he not con­front Herod for killing John the Baptist? These and oth­er sim­il­ar ques­tions have been asked or could be asked con­cern­ing Jesus atti­tude. Jesus’ with­draw­al is not due to fear or cow­ardice. It simply means it is not yet his time (cf. John 2:4). When his times comes, not even Peter can stop him (cf. Matt 16:23). What Jesus did should be a ser­i­ous les­son to all of us. Some­times, some people like tak­ing fool­ish risks under the guise of hav­ing faith. Mind you, faith should not make you reas­on fool­ishly, speak fool­ishly, or even do fool­ish things. A con­crete sign of faith is doing the will of God. Jesus has a mis­sion to accom­plish, and so, it was not neces­sary con­front­ing Herod at that point in ques­tion. There will be time to do that. If for instance, you have chil­dren, then, you must be very care­ful in what you do. That is, you should not involve your­self in situ­ations that will put you in the con­di­tion of not being able to take care of those chil­dren. Like Jesus, you should learn to with­draw to do first things first.

As usu­al, the crowd knew about Jesus’ plan and pre­ceded him. Mat­thew says when Jesus saw the crowd, he had com­pas­sion on them and healed their vari­ous sick­nesses. This heal­ing must have been pre­ceded by teach­ing and pro­clam­a­tion of the good news to the people as in Mat­thew 4:23. Do not for­get that ignor­ance is also part of sick­ness. Today, we see huge crowds parad­ing from one corner to anoth­er in search of break­throughs, prosper­ity and mir­acles. Jesus nev­er took advant­age of the crowd that came to him, and he did not deceive them with lies just to make money with them. Today, what do we notice? I leave the rest to you.

The situation today

The dis­ciples’ request and Jesus’ reac­tion are two dif­fer­ent atti­tudes that neces­sit­ate deep reflec­tion. The dis­ciples’ atti­tude could be likened to the beha­viour of many reli­gious lead­ers today, who are only inter­ested in snatch­ing money and oth­er prop­erty from the people. Just vis­it the Churches on Sundays and oth­er days of (pseudo) wor­ship and you will be bewildered by what you see. Priests and Pas­tors con­stantly device new strategies to lure the people (their vic­tims) to mak­ing more fin­an­cial dona­tions. What has not been done? Sow­ing of seeds in its mul­ti­form: spe­cial offer­ing seed.….….…..

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