Daily Gospel Reflection
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February 6, 2023
After making the crossing to the other side of the sea,
Jesus and his disciples came to land at Gennesaret
and tied up there.
As they were leaving the boat, people immediately recognized him.
They scurried about the surrounding country
and began to bring in the sick on mats
to wherever they heard he was.
Whatever villages or towns or countryside he entered,
they laid the sick in the marketplaces
and begged him that they might touch only the tassel on his cloak;
and as many as touched it were healed.
I’ve always been suspicious of crowds. Anytime people flock to a trend by the dozens, my first reaction is skepticism. In my experience, such fads either have to be too good to be true or reflect some base desire that I’m usually better off avoiding.
Besides, pursuing such objects often involves activities I’d rather avoid, like waiting in long lines, spending excessive money, being surrounded by noise, making a spectacle to get attention, or losing sleep.
I was proud that I barely noticed the recent concert ticket fiasco in the news that left millions of fans in desperate frustration. It’s easy for me to scoff at popular fads, tempted to indulge in an inflated sense of authenticity or superiority for eschewing the clamoring of the masses.
But this attitude is constantly confronted by the gospels, where crowds followed Jesus everywhere. People were falling over themselves and cutting holes in roofs just to be healed by Jesus.
Would I have dismissed Jesus because he was a local celebrity? How often do I neglect my relationships with him because others seem closer to him, and I hesitate to get in the way? Do I desire him enough to follow him from town to town?
Reading about the crowds that relentlessly pursued Jesus challenges each of us to do the same. May we ponder how passionately we pursue Christ and what we are willing to do to encounter Jesus today.
Prayer
Jesus the Christ, when the people of Gennesaret saw you, they recognized your healing power and the love and power of your teaching. Wherever you enter our lives, help us to recognize you and to be open and responsive to the healing and the Gospel message you offer us. Give us the grace to be instruments of your healing and grace in the lives of others. Amen.
Saint of the Day
Though he is not considered a canonized saint by the Catholic church (nor is he currently being considered for canonization), Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C. was a remarkable man who was animated with a stubborn faith and missionary zeal. He founded the University of Notre Dame in 1842.
Father Sorin was born on this day in 1814, in Ahuillé, Mayenne, a small village in northwestern France. Ordained to the priesthood in 1838, he led a band of seven members of a newly formed religious order, the Congregation of Holy Cross, to what was then mission territory on the Indiana frontier three years later. On Nov. 26, 1842, when he arrived at what is now the campus of Notre Dame, Father Sorin was 28 years old.
In his journal, Father Sorin described the only shelter then standing on the 524-acre site: “An old log cabin, 24 × 40 feet, the ground floor of which answered as a room for a priest, and the story above for a chapel for the Catholics of South Bend and the neighborhood, although it was open to all the winds.”
Undaunted by the cabin’s dilapidation, Father Sorin envisioned there what he soon began to build and to call “L’Université de Notre Dame du Lac” (the University of Our Lady of the Lake), insisting that the new school would become “one of the most powerful means for doing good in this country.”
The confidence of that pledge was tested on April 23, 1879, when a massive fire destroyed the Main Building and virtually the entire fledgling university. In what would become an iconic moment of Notre Dame’s history, Father Sorin addressed the stunned survivors of the catastrophe who had gathered a few days later in Sacred Heart Church.
“I came here as a young man and dreamed of building a great university in honor of Our Lady,” he told them. “But I built it too small, and she had to burn it to the ground to make the point. So, tomorrow, as soon as the bricks cool, we will rebuild it, bigger and better than ever.” The University reopened four months later.
During the years of his presidency at Notre Dame, Father Sorin discouraged public celebrations of his birthday, but did allow a public celebration of the feast of his patron, St. Edward the Confessor, on Oct. 13.
Father Sorin died in 1893, and is buried in the Holy Cross cemetery across St. Mary’s Lake from the Dome. Sorin College, home to about 150 men, was the first residence hall with private rooms; it was named after the founder when it was built in 1888.
In a recent audience with members of Notre Dame’s board of trustees, Pope Francis praised the University’s founder, saying that “the vision which guided Father Edward Sorin and the first religious of the Congregation of Holy Cross in establishing the University of Notre Dame du Lac remains, in the changed circumstances of the 21st century, central to the University’s distinctive identity and its service to the Church and American society.”
On the birthday of Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., let us pray for Notre Dame, that it might become a powerful means for good!