The latest numbers from the damage done by 2 powerful back-to-back earthquakes in Venezuela are staggering:
- 12,000 people have been injured so far
- 38,500 are still missing
- Nearly 3,000 people have been found dead
- 800 buildings collapsed and another 58,000 damaged, and,
- the financial damage estimates now are $6.7 billion
In response to this devastating catastrophe, numerous countries from around the world, including our own, have mounted the largest disaster relief efforts to date. We’ve also seen individual communities unite to donate to this region, including our own parish here. My own Adrian Congregation donated finances and supplies from the nursing department of our university. Everyone is trying to do what they can; the compassionate heart of the world has been touched.
In our gospel today, we witness the compassionate heart of Jesus. “At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them”. He not only cured the man who was mute, but he cured every disease and illness of people in all the towns and villages he visited. No one was excluded. Imagine the joy he brought to so many. And to those who witnessed his compassion, (a word which means to ‘suffer with), he was being an example of the Sermon on the Mount that he had just preached. In other words, he was practicing what he preached and was wanting his listeners to do likewise.
Each day we are offered an invitation to be compassionate disciples. Jesus said that laborers are needed for the harvest. Then and now, the Lord is looking for those who have His heart, who see people with a need, and are willing to go and help them. Whatever we do for one another is bringing Christ and hope to them. It’s our way of being disciples.
The closing lines of the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila remind us of this reality:
“Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
