We see in today's Gospel (Mt 4: 12-17, 23-25) that Jesus has left Nazareth (presumably to avoid Herod, who has arrested John the Baptist) and is travelling through Galilee. He is teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing all the sick people who were brought to him. Matthew tells us that "great crowds" followed Him from all throughout the area. We might ask ourselves why that was the case. Why were so many people following Jesus as He journeyed from place to place in Galilee? We are tempted to give very human, practical explanations for this phenomenon. They wanted to be healed, we might say, or to see healings. Or perhaps they were interested in His teachings, and wanted to understand what He meant by the Kingdom of God. Yes, those things are probably true, and would explain following Jesus-- to a point. Sure, you might follow Jesus so that you could get healed, but if that is what you wanted, wouldn't you stop following once the miracle had happened? Wouldn't you get back about your life, now that your illness was cured? Isn't that what people ordinarily do? Wouldn't the same thing be true if you followed Jesus to see miracles, for "the show," as it were? After you had seen miracles for a day or two or three, wouldn't your curiousity be satisfied? After all, Jesus wasn't performing miracles for "the show" of it-- He healed because of His love for and empathy with the victims of illness or accident who came before Him. So if all you wanted was "the show," wouldn't you get tired of the same performance after a bit? I think the same thing is true when it comes to Jesus' teaching. Sure, He was a brilliant teacher but there have been lots of brilliant teachers in the world, and they didn't have "great crowds" following them. Eventually there is only so much a person's brain can absorb, and after a day or two, our brains are full. We need to go off and process what we've learned before we can take in more. No, I think all the human, practical explanations for the fact that "great crowds" followed Jesus ultimately fall apart. They simply don't provide an adequate explanation for what was going on. I think we're ultimately driven to an understanding that people followed Jesus not just (or even primarily) because of what He said or what He did. They followed Jesus because of who He was. There was something extraordinary about Him that drew people to Him. What people didn't realize then, but what we know now, is that Jesus was not just an extraordinary human being-- a worker of miracles and a prophet and a gifted teacher. He was also the Son of God-- the Second Person of the Trinity-- who had come to earth. It was the attractiveness of Jesus' divinity that drew people to Him in such an extraordinary way. The same thing is true today. Truly being a follower of Christ has to be based on more than an intellectual acceptance of miraculous events and an appreciation of deep and wise teachings. Those things are a start, of course, but only a start. No, at its core being a follower of Jesus means that we've fallen in love with Him, with the person of Christ, and have a relationship with Him that transcends Jesus' miraculous powers and wonderful words. We don't have to be great theologians or learned Bible scholars to follow Jesus. We just have to let ourselves fall in love.