Introduction
“Do not visit pagan territory and do not enter a Samaritan town. Go instead to the lost sheep of the people of Israel” (Mt 10:5-6). This is a strange injunction that Jesus gives to his disciples before sending them on a mission. What does it mean? Is it a concession to the prejudices and the exclusive particularism of most of his people? If so, it would be irreconcilable with the order that is at the end of the Gospel: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19).
Instead, it is the expression of God’s strategy: to bring salvation to all peoples; the Lord chose Israel, “his first-born son” (Ex 4:22). He has made him a sign of his thoughtfulness and attention in the world. The Lord wanted him holy to show all people his sanctity and made him “light of the nations that my salvation will reach to the ends of the earth” (Is 49:6).
“God has not rejected his people” (Rom 11:2), “the call of God and his gifts cannot be nullified” (Rom 11:29). Jesus is in tune with God’s pedagogy: above all, he takes care of Israel (Mt 15:24) so that he can fulfill his mission as a mediator of salvation.
Today the Christian community is the depository of the promises and covenant between God and humanity. The Church, called to sanctify the world, must first sanctify itself; be responsible for proclaiming liberty, equality, peace, respect for the individual, and live within these values; destined to be the city set on a hill and a lamp that lights up the house. It needs to be enlightened, first, by the Word of his Lord.
- To internalize the message, we will repeat:
“We are the people whom the Lord has chosen to be the light of the world.”
First Reading: Exodus 19:2-6a
In those days, the Israelites came to the desert of Sinai and pitched camp. While Israel was encamped here in front of the mountain, Moses went up the mountain to God.
Then the LORD called to him and said, “Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob; tell the Israelites: You have seen for yourselves how I treated the Egyptians and how I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself. Therefore, if you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people, though all the earth is mine. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”
After the liberation from Egypt, the Israelites walked in the desert until, after three months, they arrived at Mount Sinai. There the Lord entered an alliance with them. Making an alliance is like signing a contract; it promises to remain faithful to a commitment freely assumed in front of witnesses.
Today’s reading reports the words God has proposed to Israel to make a covenant with him. To convince them, first, he reminds them of what he did for them in the past. He freed them from the slavery in Egypt and, like an eagle that with its powerful wings carries its young to a secure place, led them into the mountain of the desert (v. 4).
After this self-presentation, he makes his proposal and lists the covenant’s conditions and the promises: If you listen to me and keep my covenant, you shall be my people that I protect in every situation. You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (vv. 5-6). We are interested in these last words because they relate to today’s Gospel. Israel was to be ‘holy,’ that is, ‘separated’ from other peoples and reserved for his God. This does not mean it had to be kept physically ‘isolated,’ but it had to be different from the pagans in its religious and moral life. It would also be a nation of priests because everyone, in their own life, would make worship the Lord.
What happened to Israel is a picture of what happens in the new people of God, the Church. Today’s Gospel speaks to us of the beginning of these new people with the call and sending of the twelve apostles.
Second Reading: Romans 5:6-11
Brothers and sisters: Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath. Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life. Not only that, but we also boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Two Sundays ago, we introduced the problematic issue of justification. We were saying that it is not reduced to a stroke of a pen that removes the sin. However, it consists in the gift of a new heart, in the outpouring of the Spirit, an inner impulse that leads irresistibly to the good. From this justification comes ‘a whole new conduct of life’ (Rom 6:3). In baptism, the Christian “has given up the former way of living, the old self, whose deceitful desires bring self-destruction and puts on the new self, or a self according to God” (Eph 4:23-24).
In reality, however, who can claim to have genuinely had this experience? Who feels this intimate stimulus to live according to Christ? Are we not verifying that even after baptism moral shortcomings continue? Faced with this, we can conclude that something is not going the right way: either justification failed, or the Lord has abandoned us, and our hope of salvation has no solid foundation.
In today’s reading, Paul responds: our hope will not be disappointed because it is not based on our good works, on our capabilities, or our loyalty, but the unfailing love of God (v. 6). When God begins the work of salvation, he does not stop midstream; he is not discouraged, his approach is not diminished, he always brings it to completion. A human being can indeed remain stubbornly attached to evil, but there’s no reason to despair. It is from this attachment that God has promised to deliver us. It is unthinkable that he, at some point, would be forced to declare defeat. If there was any doubt God could see this through to the end, why would he start this work of liberation?
The love of God, says Paul, is not as weak or as insecure as that of people who often only know how to love those who earn it. They rarely give their lives, only for people they feel worthy of such a gesture. God loves differently; he also loves his enemies and provides proof of this by giving them his son. If God loved us when we were his enemies, how much more will he love us now that we have been justified? Our sin will never be stronger than his love. Even if we abandon him, he will not abandon us.
Gospel: Matthew 9:36─10:8
At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”
Then he summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon from Cana, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, “Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” The number of priests and religious brothers and sisters is in constant and dramatic decline: attritions increase, the average age rises, and the prospects for a turnaround are few to none. What can we do? The answer is almost obvious: “Pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Undoubtedly, we need to pray for priestly and religious vocations. However, restricting the Gospel passage to these categories is undoubtedly not correct and even dangerous. It leads us to think that they only exist to serve the community and assumes that their absence leaves God’s people like a flock without a shepherd and leaving the ‘harvest’ uncollected for lack of ‘reapers.’
The strongest objection to this interpretation is that we do not understand why God should be asked to send shepherds for his flock and workers to his field. This could even be quite irritating. We could be committing ourselves to nights and days of study of the Word of God while the Lord watches, unmoved, the scattering of his sheep and the ruin of his crop.
We would need to drop everything and go back to zero. The 12 disciples do not represent the priests, brothers and sisters, but the whole people of God. Suppose this is the perspective, then the interpretation of the passage changes. It is every disciple who is called to a mission in the field—the world. Whatever our state in life may be (married or single, learned or ignorant, strong or weak), everyone has to be engaged in the construction of God’s Kingdom.
Now it becomes clear why prayer is necessary: not to convince God, but to change the human heart. We are asked to disconnect our minds and heart from the thinking patterns and judgments of this world, assimilate the thoughts of God and adopt the new life brought by Christ. How to get this conversion, this radical transformation? Only the dialogue with God and meditating on His word can accomplish the miracle. This is the prayer that Jesus recommends.
We come now to the calling and sending of the Twelve. There is a considerable difference between Jesus’ behavior and that of the rabbis of his time. They surrounded themselves with disciples to make them honored rabbis, well-paid and looked after. Jesus makes his own call on his disciples. He feels compassion for his people because he does not see anyone taking care of them: the political leaders or the religious authorities. All have their interest, advantage and prospect for advancement at heart. They want privilege; to improve their own lives and, in the process, neglect the hungry, sick, oppressed, and victims of abuse.
Jesus is sensitive to the needs and pain of the people. The verb ‘splagknizomai’ appears only twelve times in the Gospels. In every case, it is used to express the profound feeling of God or Christ for people. Here, it is applied to the feeling that Jesus experiences: he does not remain aloof, does not watch the condition in which his people struggle with detachment or disinterest, but their condition moves him. He feels a visceral emotion (‘splagkna’ in Greek are called the bowels). This compassion leads him to intervene. He initiates a new people by calling the Twelve, a number that refers to the 12 tribes of Israel.
Jesus enjoins these disciples to continue his work. For this, he wants them, first of all, to pray because only in prayer can they assimilate the sentiments of God. Then he gives them the authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal the sick. We should not imagine that Christians (particularly priests) have received some mysterious power to perform miracles or heal people. The demons and illnesses symbolize all that is opposed to human life—physical, mental, spiritual.
They are the expression of all forms of death which, at all times, we must confront. The authority that Jesus confers is not on people but over evil. It is the prodigious power of his word, which can eradicate evil and create a new world. In the last verses, the mission to which the disciples are called is again invoked: “Go and proclaim the message: The kingdom of heaven is near. Heal the sick, bring the dead back to life, cleanse the lepers, and drive out demons” (vv. 7-8). It is what Jesus himself did (Mt 9:35; 4:17). Christians are thus called to devote all their energy to ‘reproduce’ what Jesus did to make their Master present in the world. He was the first worker sent into the harvest; the disciples are his collaborators, as Paul well understood (1 Cor 3:9).
The passage concludes with the injunction, “You received this as a gift, so give it as a gift” (v. 8). It is a demand for complete detachment from any form of self-interest in the performance of their apostolic action. The disciple of Christ does not work for personal benefit: to be known, esteemed or revered, especially not to enrich oneself. We freely offer our readiness, as did the Master. Our only reward will be the joy of having served and loved our brothers and sisters with the generosity he has seen Jesus operate.