Io Amo Gesù

The commentary on the liturgy of February 6, 2021 by Don Luigi Maria Epicoco

Da Paolo Tessione -

What does Jesus expect of us? It is a question that we very often answer by specifying the verb to do: “I should do this, I should do this”.

The truth, however, is another: Jesus does not expect anything from us, or at least he does not expect anything that has to do first of all with the verb to do. This is the great indication of today's Gospel:

“The apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. And he said to them, "Come aside, to a lonely place, and rest for a while." In fact, there was a large crowd that came and went and they didn't even have time to eat anymore ”.

Jesus cares about us and not about our business results. As individuals but also as a Church we are sometimes so concerned about "having to do" to achieve some result, that it seems that we have forgotten that Jesus has already saved the world and that the thing that is at the top of His priorities is ours person, and not what we do.

This obviously must not diminish our apostolate, or our commitment in every state of life we ​​live, but it should however relativize it in such a great way as to remove it from the top of our worries. If Jesus is first of all concerned with us, then it means that we should first be concerned with Him and not with things to do. A father or mother who goes into Burnout for the sake of their children has not done their children a favor.

They want to have a father and a mother first and not two exhausted ones. This does not mean that they will not go to work in the morning or that they will no longer worry about practical things, but that they will relativize everything to what really matters: the relationship with the children.

The same thing is for a priest or a consecrated person: it is not possible for pastoral zeal to become so much the center of life as to obscure what matters, that is, the relationship with Christ. This is why Jesus reacts to the disciples' stories by giving them the opportunity to recover what matters.