Service & Solitude

If God has time for rest and relaxation, his Son seems to have more difficulty managing the same in today’s Gospel. The apostles have returned from their missionary campaign; there are no casualties. After Jesus hears their report of what they have done and taught, he says to them: ‘’You must come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while.’’ This is to escape the traffic of people coming and going, which is so constant that the apostles can’t find time to eat. So, Jesus and the apostolic party climb into a boat and aim themselves for peace in some lonely place. 

Lonely places are hard to come by when people are intent on keeping you company. Jesus and the apostles become fugitives, but their escape into privacy doesn’t come off. If enjoying privacy depends on the ability to control the amount of access people have to you, Jesus is not very able in that direction. But he is up against impressive opposition. The people can easily see where the boat is heading and their energetic need them there first. 

Jesus does not have the heart to play hide -and-seek with the crowds. The apostolic party disembarks. They give themselves up. The game is over. So much for their attempt at a package holiday. But by not turning the boat around, by not sending away the besieging crowds, Jesus gives his apostles a profound teaching on the tenderness of God for God’s people. He demonstrates the truth of his own teaching, ‘’Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find.’’ The crowds have asked, and they do receive; they have sought him out and they do find him. When the crowds seek Jesus at a time when Jesus is seeking privacy, there is no question which need has priority. The schedule of the crowd becomes more important to Jesus than his own. That’s the kind of pity Jesus is that’s the kind of God Jesus reveals; that’s the kind of pity Jesus hopes his own apostles will show in their time. 

Of course, this Gospel passage is not an argument against apostolic havens or holidays; rather, it does serve to highlight the urgent love of Jesus for people in need. Jesus’ original plan for the apostles underlines the importance of spending time apart and the value of rest and recovery. The apostles are not automatons; they have to rest sometime. If no rest is ever taken, if no time is ever reserved for recovery and renewal, the apostle will simply end up a burnt -out case with nothing to offer but his guilty exhaustion. And that offer is no good to any crowd. 

We all need to get away, to be by ourselves, to have our time of quiet. We can easily accept the impulse to go off by oneself, so long as it is expressed by writers and artists and others. For many of us, however, solitude is commonly seen as a state of pain. It is something to run from as we hunt down companionship and things to do. Let one half of a married couple retire to another room, shut the door and gaze fixedly at a far wall, and the other half is likely to pursue with the anxious question, ‘’Are you sick?’’ or ‘’Why are you mad at me?’’ 

Sometimes when we find ourselves alone, we don’t know how to cope. Like the New York journalist who discovered how little prepared he was to cope with solitude when he was left rattling around his apartment for a weekend while his wife and children were away on a trip. ‘’It wasn’t so much a question of liking or not liking it,’’ he recalled, ‘’but simply feeling incompetent at it’’ 

Solitude can make us uncomfortable, resting can make us feel guilty, especially if we have been brought up to honor a work ethic that equates idleness with laziness. Stillness is something we have to learn in time. For God speaks to us not only in the urgent cries of other people but also in the ‘’still, small voice.’’ And to hear that voice, we have to be at one with the stillness.