Learning to See as Jesus Does: The Compassion That Transforms Mission

In his commentary on this Sunday’s Gospel, Friar Luciano Audisio, OAR, invites us to enter into Jesus’ gaze upon the crowds. Through profound biblical and spiritual reflection, he shows how Christ’s compassion is born from a gaze that loves, recognizes human wounds, and discovers God’s silent action in each person. An invitation to evangelize not from strategy, but from gratuitousness, mercy, and the capacity to see as Jesus sees.

The Gaze Born of Love

This Sunday’s Gospel allows us to enter into the very heart of Jesus. Everything begins with a simple yet decisive word: “seeing” (Ἰδών). Jesus looks at the crowds. But this is not a superficial or distracted gaze. It is the gaze of one who loves. Only love is capable of truly seeing. Only love can penetrate appearances and reach what happens in the deepest part of the human heart.

The evangelist tells us that Jesus sees the crowds and is deeply moved. He uses a very strong verb: “to be moved in one’s bowels” (σπλαγχνίζομαι). Jesus does not observe suffering from afar. He does not remain indifferent. He allows himself to be affected by it. The pain of people enters into his own heart.

And what does Jesus see? He sees men and women weary and dejected. However, the original words are even more intense. He sees people “torn” (ἐσκυλμένοι), wounded by life, and “cast down” or “scattered” (ἐρριμμένοι), like those who have lost a point of reference and no longer know where to turn.

Perhaps here we find one of the most characteristic experiences of our time. Much is said about physical fatigue, stress, or anxiety. But there also exists a deeper weariness: the weariness of the heart. It is the exhaustion that appears when one lives without a place to rest interiorly, when a relationship of trust capable of sustaining life is lacking.

The human heart was created for love. It was created to rest in a relationship where it can be fully itself, without masks or defenses. When that experience is lacking, life becomes a permanent struggle to conquer a place, to prove our worth, or to protect our securities. And that struggle ends up exhausting us.

Jesus recognizes this reality and describes it with an image taken from Scripture: “like sheep without a shepherd” (ὡσεὶ πρόβατα μὴ ἔχοντα ποιμένα). This expression appears at decisive moments in Israel’s history. Moses uses it at the end of his life when he asks God for a successor so that the people will not be left abandoned. That successor will be Joshua, “the Lord saves” (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ). It also appears in the prophets to describe the drama of exile, when the people find themselves scattered, without guidance and without hope.

The evangelist wants us to understand something very important: Jesus is the new Joshua. He comes to gather the scattered, to lead the people again, and to inaugurate the great return from spiritual exile. Where human beings experience disorientation, loneliness, or loss of meaning, Jesus presents himself as the shepherd who gathers, guides, and restores hope.

Mission Begins When We Learn to See

But the Gospel goes a step further. After contemplating the crowd, Jesus calls the disciples. Before sending them, he makes them participants in his own gaze. This is very important. Mission is not born from a strategy or a human project. It is born from learning to look as Christ looks.

Therefore Jesus states: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (ὁ μὲν θερισμὸς πολύς, οἱ δὲ ἐργάται ὀλίγοι). Sometimes we interpret these words as an invitation to work more. However, the text contains a much deeper teaching. Jesus does not say that the harvest must be produced. The harvest already exists. The Father has already been working. The seed has already grown.

The evangelizer is not called to save the world. The Savior is God. Nor is he called to manufacture faith in others. He is called to discover God’s action that is already present in each heart.

To evangelize means to recognize that the Lord always precedes us. It means to discover that, even where it seems nothing is happening, God continues working silently. Mission begins when we learn to contemplate that hidden work.

Therefore Jesus calls the Twelve and sends them. And it is significant that he grants them authority to cast out unclean spirits. Many times we immediately think of demons. However, one of the most subtle forms of evil’s action consists in deforming God’s face in our hearts.

Each time we imagine a distant, indifferent, punishing God incapable of loving us, a false image appears that distances us from Him. The mission of the disciples consists precisely in helping people discover the true face of the Father revealed by Jesus: a God who is near, merciful, and full of compassion.

Freely You Have Received, Freely Give

Finally, the Gospel concludes with a phrase that summarizes all Christian logic: “Freely you have received, freely give” (δωρεὰν ἐλάβετε, δωρεὰν δότε). Everything in our life is a gift. Faith is a gift. Mercy is a gift. God’s love is a gift. No one can buy it or deserve it. And precisely because we have received everything freely, we are called to give freely. The Christian does not live accumulating gifts for himself, but becoming himself a gift for others.

Perhaps this is the invitation the Lord extends to us today: to learn to look with his eyes, to allow ourselves to be moved by what moves his heart, to discover God’s silent work in people, and to become, with simplicity and gratuitousness, instruments of his love.

Because the world does not only need more words about God. It needs men and women who, having experienced the gratuitousness of his love, are capable of making it transparent through their own lives.