Closer Than You Think

At the very beginning of his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola invites us to imagine the Trinity looking down at the world below — seeing war and hatred, crushing poverty alongside obscene wealth, the weak ground down by the powerful — and deciding to send the Son into the middle of it all.

But notice: in today’s Gospel, Jesus is not looking down from above. He is standing in the middle of it. He sees the crowds up close — harassed, helpless, abandoned — and something happens in his chest. The Gospel uses a strong Greek word: splagchnizomai. His gut turns. He is shaken to his core by what he sees.

And what does he do with that feeling? He doesn’t turn away. He calls his disciples together — and then sends them right back out.

That is the rhythm of what we are doing here this morning.

We gather. We are fed — with the Word, with the Body of Christ. And then we are sent. “Go in peace” is not a polite goodbye. It is a commission. Go. Back to your family, your job, your block, your kitchen table. The liturgy is not shelter from the world. It is a launching pad.

The other rabbis of Jesus’ time gathered their disciples around themselves to form a stable community of learners. Jesus does something different. He calls them together only to send them out — to the lost sheep, to the broken places, to the people no one pays attention to.

Something happened recently that is worth pausing on.

Pope Leo went to Barcelona. In the Olympic stadium, before thousands of people, three young people spoke to him. A young man spoke of chasing success until he felt completely empty inside. A young woman spoke of a depression so dark she had tried to end her own life. A third spoke of her father trying to kill her mother.

The Pope did not rush to fill the silence. He listened. And then he spoke, quietly, to each one.

To the young man hollowed out by ambition, he said: your restlessness is sacred. God planted that hunger in you.

To the woman who had tried to die, he said: God is on the cross right beside you. You are not alone in your darkest place.

To the daughter carrying the wound of her father’s violence, he said: forgiveness comes in small steps. No one is asking you to do it all at once.

Three sentences. No program, no policy, no budget. Just a man who stopped, looked, and spoke what each person needed to hear.

That is the harvest Jesus is talking about. And the workers are not scarce because the field is too large. They are scarce because so few of us believe that what we have to offer is worth anything.

The workers are not scarce because the field is too large. They are scarce because so few of us believe that what we have to offer is worth anything.

But look at what the Pope offered those young people. Nothing you can buy. Nothing a market can price. Just presence. Just listening. Just words that arrive at the right moment and land like rain on dry ground.

Who among us cannot do that?

Jesus is not sending us to foreign countries or exotic missions. He is sending us back to exactly where we already are — to the grandmother who hasn’t heard a kind word in weeks, to the teenager who is disappearing into silence, to the coworker nobody notices, to the neighbor who is undocumented and afraid and invisible to everyone around her.

These are the lost sheep. They are not far away.

The compassion we feel when we hear a story like those young people in Barcelona — that feeling is not an accident. That is the Holy Spirit. That is our commission.

Go to the harvest. It is closer than you think.