Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary time
Mk6:6-13
Dear Friends, Jesus invited the Apostles to join the battle between good and evil, sin and grace. Their weapons were their experience with Jesus, the power of God’s word, the call to confront the demons and the healing power of God revealed in Jesus. These elements are the basic seed of what we have come to call evangelization. This is proclaiming the saving word of Jesus to transform individuals and all reality. This is the Church’s thrust into the ongoing conflict of good and evil. Like the Apostles, we are called to share in this glorious struggle. As Pope Francis continually tells us it is absolutely crucial to our Christian call to be missionary disciples.The problem is that the work of being missionaries, particularly in our Catholic tradition, has been set aside for the “professionals”. The call to be missionaries for the folks in the Sunday pews has been woefully neglected in our Christian formation. For most of us, our awareness and connection with the Church’s missionary activity has meant to be generous with the second collection.
Mark’s words today possess a very unsettling consequence. Our identity as Church members means we have been sent. Like the first Apostles on this very first missionary journey, we are called to travel light and proclaim the word.
The only preparation the first Apostles had was their encounter with Jesus. Their message was a call to repentance. Their action was to confront the power of evil in the reign of the demons. They were to present the wonder of God’s healing power. The highlight of the mission was to proclaim the miracle of God’s saving word.
Today, Pope Francis never tires of calling us to understand our Christian vocation is one of being missionary disciples. The heart of the missionary message will always be the same. It is the love of God calling all to new life in Christ Crucified and Christ Risen. Early in his exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, the Pope says, “being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but an encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”
All of this seems so far from the average experience of the faithful Church members in our time. Yet, today’s gospel is just part of a clear mandate found in all the Gospels: to follow Christ includes preaching the gospel. This is part of Vatican II’s call to lay responsibility in the Church.
Pope France has consistently called us to take up the challenge to be faithful to Jesus’ directive to preach the gospel. His call is consistent in appealing to us to see ourselves as missionary disciples. This truly challenging duty should begin with two fundamental tasks to initiate this missionary effort. First and foremost is the continual encounter with Jesus that will express itself in the witness of our life. Secondly, we must be open to change how we see ourselves as good followers of Christ. We must begin to be open to learn how we can develop missionary skills. We need to see ourselves as people who are “sent” to join the battle of good and evil. Our primary weapon is our relationship with Jesus. The other particulars of the missionary task is where we need help and guidance.
Today’s selection from Mark offers us a few key a few insights for our missionary efforts. By reason of the limited resources the Apostles had, Jesus was making sure that his missionaries were embracing the culture of the people to whom they were preaching. The gospel proclamation must always be sensitive and respectful to the culture while maintaining the goal to transform the culture through the power of God’s word. In other words, we must always take people where they are.
Secondly, by going two by two, Jesus showed the importance of community in the process of proclaiming the Good News. The Church is always a community with a mission.
Thirdly, the lightness of the travelers’ resources also has a message about their missionary undertaking. The fewer the resources, the freer we will be able to point out the prophetic consequences of Jesus’ teachings. The more entrenched the Church becomes in the culture, the cost will always be paid in reducing the cutting edge of the gospel message.
Near the end of The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis says the following:
“I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, time and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.”
