FIFTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
Dag Hammarskjold, the second and youngest ever Secretary General of the United Nations once suggested that people should ‘speak only out of silence, act only out of stillness’. The recently deceased and legendary golf commentator, Peter Alliss, expressed the same sentiment when commenting on his own inimitable style: ‘I only speak when I feel I can improve on the silence’. These thought-provoking words are perfectly in tune with the life and ministry of Jesus. Prayer and reflection in the quiet space preceded all the significant moments of His journey. He prayed before embarking on His public ministry, as part of His daily routine, at His Baptism, before choosing the twelve apostles, before and after performing miracles, at the Transfiguration, during His agony on the cross. His entire mission was animated by prayer and reflection. In today’s Gospel extract, we find Him in that quiet space. He has just completed a hectic day of preaching and ministering to the sick and now as He faces a new day He retires to the solitude to get in tune with the Father. We find in Him that precious balance between action and reflection. That balance should be our goal too. The greatest malady in our world today is a loss of soul. We are not so much experiencing a clash between belief and non-belief, but rather between thinking and non-thinking! We should learn from the Master. The body is the child of the soul and when body and soul are in harmony happiness is the natural result.
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