LK: 10:1-11
Dear Friends, Jesus was very clear. The selected seventy-two were to proclaim the arrival of the kingdom of God. This message was forthright and simple. God is acting. Their message is the good news that there will be a day of justice. There will be saving peace that has the last word over all evil and all violence and its seemingly endless designs of new horror. God is responding to humankind’s pervasive evil. The healing that Jesus tasked the disciples with is the beginning of the final transformation of reality in peace, wholeness and integrity. Justice will prevail over a sinful and broken world, over each and every person. This is the saving mission of Jesus that is being proclaimed.
Today’s gospel passage invites us share the involvement the first missionary disciples. This was the vision of Pope Francis for all of us. From these first missionary disciples we can learn what is necessary to perform the task of proclaiming the good news. First and foremost, our responsibility is to let the message of Jesus flow from a heart of deep personal conviction. To do this we must travel lightly and strip ourselves of the false values and deceptions of the world and be people of deep personal prayer. Our world today, like the world in Jesus’ time, has no acceptance for God’s messengers who witness against the false values, materialism and hedonism of our day. The integrity of the disciples’ presence and commitment is the most important part of the proclamation of the kingdom. It has to be a commitment that consumes one’s whole being.
Centuries after the first missionary disciples, Francis of Assisi captured the depth of this mystery. He said we must preach the gospel at all times and use words only when necessary. Such a person has been described as a witness whose life speaks so profoundly that one cannot hear what they say.
For almost fifty years, the Popes, from Paul VI to Francis, have been insistent on the utter priority of the mission of evangelization, the proclamation the Good News. You can be sure one of the first substantial statements from Leo XIV will be on the Church’s most fundamental task, to proclaim the gospel.
Pope Francis’ first statement was The Joy of the Gospel, a canticle of wonder on the topic of evangelization as the self-defining task of the People of God. In the Joy of the Gospel, Francis brings a brilliance and power to highlight the mission of the People of God to proclaim the Gospel. By baptism, all are called to holiness. All are called to be missionary disciples. No longer is preaching the gospel a specialty of the theologically trained. All are called to be witnesses and proclaimers of Jesus Christ.
Francis envisioned a new day for the Church. All this renewal will flow from a heightened awareness of the purpose and importance of evangelization. The Pontiff says, “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, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation” (#27).
The main characteristics of the evangelizing mission Francis calls us to are:
- It is the fundamental task of the Church. It is also the essential ministry of the parish and the individual disciple of Christ.
- The evangelization involves not just the personal transformation in the values of the gospel but of all reality in its social, economic, political and cultural realities must be transformed in these gospel values.
- The proclamation must always center on the saving love and mercy revealed in Christ crucified and Christ risen.
