Gospel: Matthew 9:36–10:8
Priests and nuns are in constant and dramatic decline: What to do? The answer is almost obvious: “Pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” However, restricting ourselves to these categories of Christians the application of the proposed Gospel passage is not right and even dangerous. It leads us to think that they will only have to commit to community service and assume that God’s people is a flock without a shepherd, being a “harvest” that is not collected and is lost for lack of “reapers”.
The twelve disciples—let’s say it now—do not represent the priests and nuns, but the whole people of God. Whatever one’s condition of life be (married or single, learned or ignorant, strong or weak …) everyone has to engage oneself in the construction of God’s kingdom.
The context of choosing the 12 apostles is the compassion of Jesus for his people because he does not see anyone taking care of them: not political leaders, nor the religious authorities. All are driven by the pursuit of their own interests, their own advantages and prospects for advancement. They aim at privileges; they want to improve their own lives and neglect the people who are hungry, sick, living oppressed and victim of abuses.
Jesus is sensitive to the needs and the human pain. The verb ‘splagknizomai’ for compassion occurs only twelve times in the Gospels. It is always used to express the profound emotion of God or of Christ towards people. Here it is applied to the feelings that Jesus experiences: he does not remain aloof, does not watch with detachment and disinterest the condition in which his people struggle, but he is moved. He feels a visceral emotion.
This compassion leads him to intervene. He initiates a new people, called the twelve, and this number refers to the twelve tribes of Israel.
Jesus enjoins these disciples to continue his work. For this, he wants, first of all, that they pray, because only in prayer they can assimilate the sentiments of God. Then he gives them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal the sick.
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—as it is easy to check—of what Jesus himself did (Mt 9:35; 4:17). Christians are thus called to devote all their energies to “reproduce” to make their Master present in the world. He is 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), is the demand of complete detachment from any form of self-interest in the performance of apostolic action.
The disciple of Christ does not work to get some personal benefit: to be known, esteemed, revered, to enrich himself. He offers free his readiness, as did the Master. His only reward will be the joy of having served and loved the brothers with the generosity of which he has seen Jesus operate.