Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed our thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

We read in the Gospel that our Lord made his disciples get into the boat and cross the sea ahead of him to Bitsaita

while he himself dismissed the crowd. Apparently there was a lot of people, as we know, that needed to be cured, that were following our Lord.

They were sickly people. They were needy.

They were looking for a miracle or a favor from our Lord.

And word got around and our Lord was very busy.

And at some point it even says that he doesn't even have time to eat, even take care of his basic needs, such as food and drink, is something

that he just couldn't do because of the pressing need to take care of the suffering of people.

And of course, our Lord came precisely for this to save us and to save

so many people not only from physical illness, but especially from the interior illness called

sin. But at the same time, our Lord feels the need to have moments in which he gets away from the hustle and bustle

of the crowds in order to find solitude and silence with his Father God. And that's why it says

in the gospel, and when he had dismissed them, meaning the crowd, he went away to the mountain to pray.

The mountain in the Bible has always been seen as a privileged locus, as a place where we meet God.

Think of Moses, who went up to the mountain to pray for a long time.

40 days, at times even, he would meet our Lord.

And even when he would come down from the mountain, he had to put a kind of veil over his head because his face was so bright because he was

reflecting the glory of the Lord that people couldn't look at him, you know. And there was something

new, there was something different. There was something special about Moses when he came down from the mountain.

...