The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 17, 2023

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.”

“At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned.”  A couple of vocabulary details to helps us with this Gospel Reading.  First, while “Jesus’ heart was moved with pity” is a picturesque phrase, the Greek word simply means “to pity”.  St. Matthew, as an author, was not much given to sentimental phrases like this.  Second, the Greek word translated as “abandoned” actually has the meaning of “cast aside”: the shepherd has not merely walked away from the flock, he has treated them contemptuously in leaving them.  This describes the state of the Jews at that time.  The priests did not preach to them or teach them the Law as the Law itself commanded them to do, and those self-appointed experts, the Pharisees, misinterpreted the Word of God for the people so that they were not much better off than if they had no teachers at all.  The people yearned for a Savior and desired to do God’s will, but the Pharisees did not accept Jesus despite his miracles and they made following the Law so complicated that the idea of serving God fell away from the Law altogether.

“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”  The people are ready to hear the announcement of the approach of the Kingdom of heaven, but despite his relentless efforts, the Lord could not go out to all the towns and villages of Galilee and Judea.  Nor could he go to the Jewish communities in Alexandria, Egypt, and in Rome to preach to them.  The three years allotted for his Public Life simply did not contain enough days.  The Lord tells the disciples to pray for “laborers” — he is telling them to pray that they be good laborers for this work.  When the Lord makes us aware of a problem, he is pointing to us to do something about it.  “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.”  We do not give ourselves authority, but it must come from an authority.  Otherwise we are usurpers and no better than the Pharisees.  The Apostles receive this authority and power not in order to gather followings for themselves but to validate their preaching about the Kingdom of heaven and the need for repentance.  These signs, worked from heaven, prove to all that what they say comes from God.

“The names of the twelve apostles are these, etc.”  The list of names appears in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  The Evangelists give them in almost in the same order, with a couple variations on the names, as Nathanael for Bartholomew.  Looking at the calling of the Apostles in the four Gospels, the Apostles seem to be listed in the order in which they were called, except for Peter, who should be listed after Andrew and John, to go by the Gospel of St. John.  The Evangelists may give these lists in order to distinguish them from the deacons and other disciples preaching in the earliest days of the Church.

“Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  The Lord forbids the Apostles to go into non-Jewish lands not because he disdains the people in these places but because he wants to give his Apostles a chance to learn how to preach in a familiar setting before going into more challenging locations.  “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  This verse is more correctly translated, The Kingdom of God has drawn near” — it did not suddenly and randomly appear; it has steadily and deliberately approached.  “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”  The Apostles did not have to pay expensive fees to obtain the authority and power to perform these miraculous works.  Nor did they even dare to ask for it.  The Lord gave it to them with their asking and without cost.  It came with their assignment.  Evidently they did heal the sick and cast out devils, from what they told Jesus on their return, but they did not raise the dead until after they received the Holy Spirit after the Resurrection.

We are sent out likewise with such power — grace — given to us as we may need for the individual job each of us is called to do.