The Church’s Mission
In commissioning the apostles in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives them, and us, a preview of His Church’s mission after the resurrection.
His instructions to the Twelve echo those of God to the twelve tribes of Israel on the eve of their exodus from Egypt. The Israelites likewise were sent out with no bread and only one set of clothes, wearing sandals and carrying a staff (see Exodus 12:11; Deuteronomy 8:2-4). Like the Israelites, the apostles are to rely solely on the providence of God and His grace.
Perhaps, also, Mark wants us to see the apostles’ mission, the mission of the Church, as that of leading a new exodus – delivering peoples from their exile from God and bringing them to the promised land, the kingdom of heaven.
Like Amos in today’s First Reading, the apostles are not “professionals,” who earn their bread by prophesying. Like Amos, they are simply men (see Acts 14:15) summoned from their ordinary jobs and sent by God to be shepherds of their brothers and sisters.
Again this week, we hear the theme of rejection: Amos experiences it, and Jesus warns the apostles that some will not welcome or listen to them. The Church is called, not necessarily to be successful, but only to be faithful to God’s command.
With authority and power given to it by Jesus, the Church proclaims God’s peace and salvation to those who believe in Him, as we sing in today’s Psalm.
This word of truth, this gospel of salvation, is addressed to each of us, personally, as Paul proclaims in today’s Epistle. In the mystery of God’s will, we have been chosen from before the foundation of the world – to be His sons and daughters, to live for the praise of His glory.
Let us, then, give thanks for the Church today, and for the spiritual blessings He has bestowed upon us. Let us resolve to further the Church’s mission—to help others hear the call to repentance and welcome Christ into their lives.
St. Gregory the Great
Homilies on the Gospel, 17, 1-3
Dearly beloved brethren, our Lord and Savior teaches us sometimes by his words and sometimes by his actions. His actions themselves are commandments, for when he does something without saying anything, he shows us how we must act. So here he is sending his disciples out two by two to preach, because there are two commandments of love: love of God and of the neighbor. The Lord sent his disciples to preach two by two to suggest to us without saying it that the person who does not have love for the other must absolutely not take on the ministry of preaching.
It is very good that he “sent them in pairs before him to every town and place he intended to visit.” (Lk 10:1) For the Lord comes after his preachers, because preaching is a prerequisite: the Lord comes to dwell in our soul when the words of exhoration have come as a forerunner and have caused us to welcome the truth in our soul. That is why Isaiah said to the preachers: “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!” (Isa 40:3)
And the psalmist also told them: “Prepare the way for him who rises up to the west.” (Ps 67:5 Vulgate) The Lord rises up to the west [the lying down of the sun] because in lying down in his passion, he showed himself in greater glory in his resurrection. He rose up to the lying down, because in rising, he trampled underfoot the death that he suffered. Thus, we prepare the way for him who rises up to the lying down when we preach his glory to your souls, so that when he comes after, he might enlighten them by the presence of his love.
Blessed Pope John-Paul II
Message for the 42nd World Day of Prayer for Vocations (April 17, 2005)
Jesus says to Peter: “Duc in altum – Put out into the deep” (Lk 5,4). “Peter and the first companions trusted Christ’s words and cast their nets”… Those who open their hearts to Christ will not only understand the mystery of their own existence, but also that of their own vocation; they will bear the abundant fruit of grace… Living the Gospel without adding to it, these Christians become always increasingly capable of loving in the way that Christ loved, and welcome the exhortation of Christ: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5,48). They will commit themselves to persevering in unity with their brothers and sisters within the communion of the Church, and will place themselves at the service of the new evangelization, to proclaim and bear witness to the wonderful truth of the saving love of God.
Dear adolescents and young people, it is to you in a particular way that I renew the invitation of Christ to “put out into the deep”… Trust Christ; listen attentively to his teachings, fix your eyes on his face, persevere in listening to his Word. Allow Him to focus your search and your aspirations, all your ideals and the desires of your heart… I think at the same time of the words which Mary, his Mother, addressed to the servants at Cana in Galilee: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2,5). Dear young people, Christ is asking you to “put out into the deep” and the Virgin Mary is encouraging you not to hesitate in following Him. May an ardent prayer sustained by the motherly intercession of Mary, rise from every corner of the earth, to the heavenly Father to obtain “labourers for his harvest” (Mt 9,38):
Jesus, Son of God, in whom the fullness of the Divinity dwells, You call all the baptized to ” put out into the deep”, taking the path that leads to holiness. Waken in the hearts of young people the desire to be witnesses in the world of today to the power of your love. Fill them with your Spirit of fortitude and prudence, so that they may be able to discover the full truth about themselves and their own vocation.
Our Saviour, sent by the Father to reveal His merciful love, give to your Church the gift of young people who are ready to put out into the deep, to be the sign among their brothers of Your presence which renews and saves.
Holy Virgin, Mother of the Redeemer, sure guide on the way towards God and towards neighbour, You who pondered his word in the depth of your heart, sustain with your motherly intercession our families and our ecclesial communities, so that they may help adolescents and young people to answer generously the call of the Lord. Amen.
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address, July 15, 2012
Today, 15 July, in the liturgical calendar is the Memorial of St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, a Franciscan, Doctor of the Church and the successor of St Francis of Assisi at the helm of the Order of Friars Minor. It was he who wrote the first official biography of the “Poverello” and, at the end of his life, he was also Bishop of this Diocese of Albano.
Bonaventure wrote in one of his letters: “I confess before God that the reason which made me most love the life of Blessed Francis is that it resembles the birth and development of the Church” (Epistula de tribus quaestionibus, in Opere di San Bonaventura. Introduzione generale,Rome 1990, p. 29).
These words refer us directly to this Sunday’s Gospel which presents the first occasion on which Jesus sent the Twelve Apostles out on mission. Jesus “called to him the Twelve”, St Mark recounts, “and began to send them out two by two…. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics” (Mk 6:7-9).
After his conversion Francis of Assisi practised this Gospel to the letter, becoming a very faithful witness of Jesus; and, uniquely bound to the mystery of the Cross, was transformed into “another Christ”, exactly as St Bonaventure describes him.
Jesus Christ is the inspiring centre of St Bonaventure’s entire life and likewise of his theology. We rediscover this centrality of Christ in the Second Reading of today’s Mass (Eph 1:3-14), the famous hymn of St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians that begins: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”.
The Apostle thus shows in the four passages, that all begin with the same words: “in him”, with reference to Jesus, how this plan of blessing was brought about. “In him”, the Father chose us before the creation of the world; “in him” we have redemption through his blood; “in him” we became his heirs, predestined to live “for the praise of his glory”; “in him” all those who believe in the Gospel receive the seal of the Holy Spirit.
This Pauline hymn contains the vision of history which St Bonaventure helped to spread in the Church: the whole of history is centred on Christ, who also guarantees in every era new things and renewal. In Jesus, God said and gave all things, but since he is an inexhaustible treasure, the Holy Spirit never ceases to reveal and to actualize his mystery. So it is that the work of Christ and of the Church never regresses but always progresses.
Dear friends, let us invoke Mary Most Holy whom we shall be celebrating tomorrow as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, so that she may help us, like St Francis and St Bonaventure, to respond generously to the Lord’s call to proclaim his Gospel of salvation with our words and, first and foremost, with our lives.
