Thursday in the Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 9, 2020

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.”

The Apostles are sent out the way messengers from a king would be sent out, as official conveyors of announcements.  Typically, these announcements would consist of changes in the royal household such as the death of a king, the birth of a prince, the succession of a new king, or they might have to do with taxes, new laws, or war.  The appearance of heralds in the town constituted an important event and the citizens would gather in the marketplace to hear what was to be announced.  In ancient times, most people lived out their lived their lives having witnessed few such occurrences.  As an aside, in our news/information drenched times, it is hard for us to imagine a time when people went for months or years without hearing of national events, and had little curiosity concerning them.

“Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, drive out demons.”  Jesus commands this as both an extension of the proclamation and as a heavenly confirmation of it.  Note that Jesus does not tell the Apostles, You are permitted cure the sick, etc.  He orders them to do these things.  And, in ordering them to do these things, he gives them the power to carry them out.  Imagine, though, being told to cure the sick and to raise the dead!  The Apostles had seen Jesus perform these miracles for some time.  They wondered and marveled at them as much as any of the other witnesses had.  Now they are told to go and do likewise.  They must have felt great trepidation as well as excitement.  

Every priest I know has seen miracles, particularly miracles of healing.  He may have been the instrument through whom God worked the miracles he has seen.  The priest is quite aware that he did not himself “perform” them.  He has been summoned to a bedside of a gravely ill person, has perhaps anointed the person or offered other prayers, and the person suddenly gets out of bed, or starts breathing on his own again, or can talk or see after many years of muteness or blindness.  In some cases that I know of, the priest has another visit to make and leaves the healed person without realizing what has happened, and is told afterwards.  In the movies, miracles are marked by dramatic music and special effects.  Often the plot line is developed so that the miracle comes as a climax to the scene.  But none of this happens in real life.  The priest says a quiet prayer and the sick little girl gets out of bed and asks for pizza.  It is all very natural and without fuss.  The priest himself does not feel any different.  He has offered many prayers for the sick, anointed many people, and this is simply one more.  The prayers completed, he resumes his work, whatever it may be.

I suggest that this was the case with the Apostles.  People brought them their sick ones, the Apostles prayed, and the sick ones rose up, healed.  Their trepidation would have disappeared because they would have known right away that the healing was not caused by their own efforts or power.  They could have no fear that they would fail or that “their” power would fail because it was all God, God was doing this.  They were but his instruments, just as a telescope does not discover a new planet, an astronomer does.  Certainly the Apostles would have wondered at the growing number of cures, at the great works wrought through their hands, but as men who worked with their hands and knew the cost of accomplishing any labor, they would have known that this was God at work through them.  They must have been overcome with amazement at what they saw.  St. Luke will describe the return of the seventy-two disciples after a similar mission journey: “And the seventy-two returned with joy, saying: Lord, the devils also are subject to us in your name” (Luke 10, 17).  

We must also keep in mind the fate of those who would not be amazed, of those who rejected what they saw and heard.  Jesus would not have personally visited many or even any of the towns the Apostles visited on this occasion, but they would have heard of him, and many of their citizens would have seen him in other places.  There might have been some skepticism among them at first, but rejection would have come only in the face of plain evidence.  And so Jesus says of these towns, “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.”  The Jews held the fate of these two towns, which thrived with trade and commerce even long before the days of Abraham and Lot, as proverbial.  A city may have thick walls, a strong strategic location, a sure water supply, great wealth, and a long history, but if its citizens reject the laws of God, and even of nature, God will stamp it flat as though it were an offending fly.  The sins of these cities cried to God for justice: “The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and their sin very grievous” (Genesis 18, 20).  Jesus is saying that if these cities were thus destroyed in the time before grace, how much more terrible it will be for those who reject him now.