Saturday February 3, 2024

When Jesus saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, … and he began to teach them many things. (from Mark 6: 30-34)

Good News Reflection for:

Saturday of the 4th Week in Ordinary Time
February 3, 2024

Today’s Readings:

1 Kings 3: 4-13
Ps 119: 9-14
Mark 6: 30-34
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020324.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-february-3-2024

The power of empathy

Empathy is one of the faith-muscles that God designed into us when he created us in his own image. Empathy is why the divine Jesus became one of us and then died for us. Empathy — not sympathy — is what moved his heart to heal people and spend so much time teaching them. Empathy for us in our sinfulness is what made God the Father sacrifice his Son for our sake.

Empathy is not the same as sympathy. It doesn’t mean feeling sorry for someone. It involves compassion — which in biblical terms means to walk with someone through their difficulties with passion, i.e., as Christ. Empathy is a powerful expression of love that can redeem a bad situation into a good one.

It begins with the question, “Why did they do what they did?” And it ends with the question, “How can I help?” It’s a journey of passionately caring because we understand something about what the other is feeling and why.

When we don’t understand well enough to care this much (yet), we can go into our personal storehouse of memories to find an experience that caused us to feel or react in a similar way. There is no human experience that is so different from all other human experiences that we cannot relate to it. Once we get in touch with that similarity, we automatically connect to what’s happening in our beloved today. We empathize. 

Empathy is the power to love in a way that makes others feel cared about. And caring is the catalyst for healing.

Can you feel God the Father’s empathy for you?

(From Chapter 23* of The Father’s Heart. Order this book from ToTheFathersHeart.com.)

When my daughter, Tammy, was sixteen, she had to endure major back surgery to straighten her spine. As her parents, Ralph and I endured the waiting room with some difficulty, waiting for assurance that everything had gone well. Sometimes my mind drifted to the operating room and I imagined her lying there with her insides exposed and bleeding. Quickly I diverted my attention — it was too much!

However, this was nothing compared to how I felt during her first few days of healing. As she suffered in the hospital bed, the morphine drip that relieved her pain was not nearly enough to make her feel good. She hurt so bad that she cried and she was very angry that Ralph and I had put her through this.

I wanted to cry with her. I wanted to hold her in my arms, but I couldn’t because the bedrails and tubes and monitors blocked me. I wanted to make her pain go away, but I was powerless. So I ran from the room and sought out the hospital chaplain. I cried deeply, uncontrollably in his office. My tears poured out from the deep well of empathy that I felt for her as her mother, which had been accumulating since the doctor first told us that she needed surgery.

When a parent suffers the pain of watching a child in pain, we’re experiencing a tiny portion of how our Divine Daddy feels when we suffer. Abba-Father cares so much that he cries the tears of a totally empathetic parent.

© 2024 by Terry A. Modica

* Chapter 23 includes:

• Abba’s tears can heal you
• Abba’s peace can heal you
• Abba’s compassion can heal you
• Abba’s vision can heal you
• Knowing Abba’s Divine Will can heal you
• The final steps to healing

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