Sunday 14 C
3 July 2022
Is 66:10-14c
Ga 6:14-18
Lk 10: 1-12.17-20
Today’s Gospel speaks of mission. Jesus sends 70 (or 72) disciples, two by two, onto the roads of Palestine, wherever He himself plans to go. Already, Jesus has chosen 12 disciples whom he called apostles. Now, he sends a larger group with a very similar task. They are not expected to display a complete teaching of the truths of the Gospel. Rather, they have to create an awareness. “The Kingdom has come near”. They have to create an attention, an openness to Jesus’ message. They are signs and they behave like signs. Hence their poverty – they have with them the bare minimum – their absence of pretence – they take the first offer of hospitality and stick to it, even if something better comes up afterwards. They perform signs: they heal the sick. Theirs is a mission of peace: they do not want to frighten people, but to invite them to welcome God’s message of grace. They are sent as pilgrims and witnesses, more precisely, as workers: they are co-workers with Jesus; they share in the great work of the announcement of the Gospel. They are the first image we are given of a community of disciples who are also missionaries and who continue Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom – they are already the Church.
Our Pope Francis likes this vision of the Church, not as a hierarchy of civil servants, but as a people of faith sent to announce the Gospel of Christ on the roads of the world. It is certainly part of what is meant by this word we’ll have to learn to live with: synodality; an abstract word which always has to make excuses for itself, but which basically translates this image of a missionary people of disciples: people walking on the same path. If there has been in the past a time when anyone, listening to today’s gospel, could think that those who were meant were the clergy and, among them, the missionaries, this time is over. The good news is that we are all concerned in this page of the Gospel. It describes the form Christian life is called to take more and more. If we want that the faith be proclaimed to the present world, we cannot wait for others to work at its evangelisation. Let us not look beside or behind us; no, we are called; we are the synodal, the missionary people of the disciples of Christ; if we are truly disciples, then truly missionaries.
In a sense, let us acknowledge we have a new job to learn. So let us receive Jesus’ instructions. “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest”. So, everything begins with prayer; we have to pray to God; He sends us: May He send more of us! Mainly, by praying we are reminded that the missionary project did not originate with us, but is always to be performed in relationship with the One who sends us: Jesus, and the One who sends Jesus: the Father. Adoration is thus the first step of mission. Only a praying people can be a missionary people.
For we are in danger of taking the missionary enterprise for an advertising campaign, following the same methods, having the same mindset. However, we are not called to promote a product (or even a set of ideas and views), but to announce Someone. This Someone is Jesus and He is to take the place which is presently occupied by someone else. When the disciples come back from their mission, they tell Jesus about their successes and their joy. Jesus gives a deeper perspective to their missionary work: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy”. This mission is a spiritual warfare, a war of Jesus against the Prince of this world; therefore, it has to be fought with the weapons of the Spirit of God which are: the truth and the light of the Gospel; the transformative power of God’s word; the life-giving power of the Cross; the glory of the Eucharist; the strength of prayer; the fortitude of a life holy, pure, humble, obedient, and loving. No evangelisation without conversion of the heart, no evangelisation without a humble, but strong desire for holiness. The synodal people is a people called to holiness of life. We have to let the light of the Gospel enter our lives, guide our great options and our daily choices. Thus we shall become witnesses of Christ’s light and love.
All of us, we are called. All of us, we are sent. All of us, we have to convert and become saints. All of us, we can hope and rejoice “for [y]our names are written in heaven”. So shall go two by two into the streets of Ryde or Newport, knocking at doors and preaching the Gospel? You may feel relieved when I say I do not think it must necessarily be the case. More probably, though, we shall be attentive to giving our lives a direction which is clearly in keeping with the Gospel. And whenever the opportunity presents itself, we shall not hesitate to declare, peacefully and forcefully, in whom we have put our trust and our hope, who it is that we love.