Friday in the 14th Week of Ordinary Time, July 12, 2024

 Matthew 10, 16-23

Jesus said to his Apostles: “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves. But beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to another. Amen, I say to you, you will not finish the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”

Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves.”  The Lord Jesus continues his instructions to the Apostles before sending them out on mission.  These words would also have applied to them as they went out to preach after the Lord’s Ascension, and they apply to his believers today.  In speaking of them as “sheep”, the Lord teaches them that they are to be innocent in their thoughts and deeds.  In teaching them that they are to be innocent “in the midst of wolves”, he is saying that those to whom he is sending them are not innocent; they are people consumed with sin who destroy the good out of their joy of destroying.  In other words, these are not other sheep, and the Apostles would be making a terrible mistake in thinking so, either through their own wishful thinking or the trickery of the “wolves”.  The Lord thus teaches them that they are to be realistic in their attitudes and behavior while maintaining their own innocence and holiness.  He is also telling them that their very innocence will draw the wolves to them, and that they, the Apostles, will be able to encounter them in this way, whereas if they came as hunters, the wolves would hide from them.  “Be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.”  We recall how it was said in Genesis 3, 1: “The serpent was more crafty than any of the beasts of the earth.”  The serpent uses its craft in order to defeat its enemies and also to hunt its meals.  It is carnivorous, and one would think it at a great disadvantage before a potential meal, but it is quite capable of striking quickly and of eating and digesting things bulkier than itself.  Ancient peoples believed a serpent could practically hypnotize prey with its eyes.  The Christian is told to use similar craftiness.  Through the use of intelligence, willingness to listen, humor, knowledge, kindness, and the miracles the Lord works through his missionaries, we can disarm many “wolves”, and “swallow” them with the Gospel, not for our nutrition but in order to bring them into true life in Christ.

“But beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues.”  While they will convert many, some will resist, and not only reject the Gospel, but persecute its heralds.  The Lord first warns them of the persecution by the Jewish leaders which they will experience in the years after Pentecost.  “You will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans.”  In later years, when their mission has spread to the lands of the Gentiles, they will be persecuted there too.  He tells them this not to frighten them but to strengthen them in those times, for they will be able to recall that the Lord had said that this would happen.  “For my sake as a witness before them and the pagans.”  It is all for the glory of God.  They are to be sheep, luring in the wolves to hear the Gospel; they will be brought before the secular authorities so that they also might hear the Gospel.  Here, we see the Lord surpassing the serpent in his craftiness.  This verse might remind us of how St. Paul spoke of his own arrest and trial: “Now, brethren, I desire you should know that the things which have happened to me have fallen out rather to the furtherance of the Gospel, so that my chains are made manifest in Christ, in all the court and in all other places. And many of the brethren in the Lord, growing confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word of God without fear” (Philippians 1, 12-14). 

“For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”  The Lord looks to the days when those who believe in him and live and preach the Gospel will be hauled up in court — legal courts, or the court of public opinion — where they would be expected to make a defense of their faith and actions.  The Lord cautions them against flights of rhetoric that are not natural to them, but to speak simply, for, having gained this opportunity to make the Lord Jesus known, “the Spirit of your Father” would speak through them.  “You will be hated by all because of my name.”  These are not the words of the founder of a secular movement or of a philosophy, seeking to gain followers by laying out visions of success.  Jesus makes it clear that we are doing this for him, out of our passionate love for him.  There will be a reward, but it will be hard-won and not given to those who merely show up: “Whoever endures to the end will be saved.”  And this is the message of the Gospel that St. Matthew wrote for the persecuted Galilean Christians a few years after the Lord’s Resurrection.  It is also the message of the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament to be written.  Over and over again, we hear: Do not faint.  Persevere.  Do not fall away in tribulation.  Persevere.  The wolves will make much fearsome noise and will kill some of you, but hold fast to the Gospel.  “When they persecute you in one town, flee to another.”  The Lord permits his followers to flee persecution, and indeed, they did at the time St. Stephen was stoned to death: “At that time, there was raised a great persecution against the Church which was at Jerusalem. And they were all dispersed through the countries of Judea, and Samaria, except the Apostles” (Acts of the Apostles 8, 1).  But in their dispersion, they preached in new towns, to which, perhaps, they would not have otherwise gone: “They therefore that were dispersed went about preaching the word of God” (Acts 8, 4).  When we allow ourselves to be God’s instruments, God achieves his greater purpose through us, even through apparent disasters. 

“Amen, I say to you, you will not finish the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”  The Lord here uses hyperbole to speak of the sureness of his coming, but he also speaks to us today, that even after two thousand years, there are lands that have never heard his name.  And as civilization falls in our own land, this becomes true even here.  The Faith spread quickly in the Roman world after it was legalized by Constantine, but within two hundred years the Huns, the Goths, and the Visigoths descended upon Europe and the world had once again to be evangelized.  The descendants of the barbarians became missionaries themselves.  And at various times through the centuries secularization and heresy necessitated the recovery of the Faith in formerly Christian lands.  May we work hard through our prayers and evangelizing efforts to bring the Gospel to the “wolves” of our own time.