Thursday in the 14th Week of Ordinary Time, July 11, 2024

Matthew 10, 7-15

Jesus said to his Apostles: “As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give. Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick. The laborer deserves his keep. Whatever town or village you enter, look for a worthy person in it, and stay there until you leave. As you enter a house, wish it peace. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; if not, let your peace return to you. Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet. Amen, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”

In the First Reading for today’s Mass, the Lord says through the Prophet: “When Israel was a child I loved him; out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11, 1).  According to the literal meaning of the verse, Almighty God loved the people of Israel long before they left their slavery in Egypt, and that he called them out of Egypt to follow Moses to the Promised Land.  The Fathers teach us the deeper, spiritual sense: that God has loved us even while we enslaved to sin and calls us out of it to live in freedom as his children.

In the Gospel Reading, the Son of the Father instructs his Apostles on how they are to lead those whom he loves out of sin and ignorance and into faith and the light of understanding.  First, the proclamation: “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  Literally, from the Greek: The Kingdom of heaven has approached (or, drawn near).  That is, the Israelites had to follow Moses across the Sinai to enter the Promised Land; the Kingdom of heaven itself has drawn near to the people so that they would have to run away from it in order to avoid it.  Then, the signs authenticating the proclamation: “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons.”  Let us try to imagine such power given to human beings who, just a short time before, were catching fish and collecting taxes!  Men without any formal religious schooling such as the Pharisees received!  Let us try to imagine being the men who received this power!  Next, the simplicity which would characterize them as followers of Jesus of Nazareth and distinguish them from the followers of the Pharisees: “Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick.”  And lastly, a reminder to the Apostles that their commission was a divine one, their mission a heavy responsibility, and the consequences for those who rejected it, eternal: “Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet. Amen, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”

Now, the Lord essentially commands the Apostles to do as he himself was doing.  It is the same proclamation. The signs the Apostles were to perform were the same that the Lord Jesus performed.  The simplicity they were to embrace was the same simplicity marked the Lord’s way of life and that which they followed as they traveled through Israel with him.  And they might wonder that if the consequences for those who rejected the message they heard from the Lord through them were so dire, how much more so for those who heard his message from his own lips and rejected it?

And so, from the Lord’s directives to the Apostles, we see how he himself lived, and how he himself so desired to save Israel that, as though racing against time, he hurried from one habitation to another, refusing to encumber himself with so much as a second tunic or a pair of sandals.  He appeared in this way as himself a runaway slave, calling upon those enslaved to sin to join him in freedom.  He does this out of the immensity of his love: “I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks.”  Even so, “though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer.”  Let us know our Healer and be healed.