Thursday in the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time, February 3, 2022

This evening I was able to spend an hour with the second grade CCD, giving them a tour of the confessionals and practicing confessions.  A good time was had by all!  This is the first evening work I’ve been able to do since getting sick.  I could not have done this last week, so it looks like I’m getting stronger.  Maybe in another week I will be able to resume Bible Study.  Thanks for your prayers!

Mark 6:7-13

Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick –no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave from there. Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.” So they went off and preached repentance. The Twelve drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

St. Mark places the sending out of the Apostles just after he tells of the Lord’s rejection at Nazareth.  As St. Luke tells it, this occurs later, after he has raised the daughter of Jairus.  This reminds us that the Gospels were composed in various, perfectly legitimate ways.  Matthew writes according to theme, Luke is more careful with his chronology, and Mark is taking down notes from Peter.  With this in mind, we should not think that the Lord sends out his Apostles on mission very early in his ministry, as we might think from reading Mark’s Gospel and assuming that he writes with attention to strict chronology that we today take for granted in biographies.   The Lord had prepared the Apostles for months of even years before sending them out.  Even so, he kept simple the message he gave them to preach: that the kingdom of God was approaching, as we read in Matthew 10, 7.  They are to prove the truth of their message by curing the sick and expelling demons.  While there are many who call themselves or are called by others “teacher” at this time, the Apostles are very distinct from these.  First of all, they are not scholars of the Law who have studied the Scriptures from their youth.  Second, they speak with thick Galilean accents.  Third, they come into towns not with a show of wealth and success, but in poverty and humility.

The Lord, sending his envoys with “nothing for the journey but a walking stick –no food, no sack, no money in their belts”, seems to send them at a disadvantage, for they will enter towns as apparent refugees.  In fact, they are running to something, not from something.  They hurry from town to town bringing the news of salvation, allowing nothing to distract or impede them.  At the same time, no one can claim that the cures they perform are due to their skill as physicians or to some medicine they administer.  The people watching the Apostles laying hands on their sick and injured neighbors see that it can only be the power of God which is healing them.

“Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.”  The Lord warns the Apostles that as certain towns have refused him entrance or not listened to him, so they will experience rejection as well.  But they are not to swell on this as though it were a personal rebuff.  They are to shake off the dust of the place, signifying that they do not wish even to carry the dust of these towns on their sandals, and move on to the next town.

Any trepidation the Apostles felt as they began their mission dissipated as they saw people respond to their preaching and as they saw many rise from their sickbeds at their word.  Knowing very well that it was God’s power and not their own that was accomplishing this, they did not fear that they would fail.  It was all God.  God’s power moves so easily through the believer that the believer is usually unaware of it and may not recognize it at all, save through hindsight.  In baptism we give him permission to move us where he wills and to use us as he chooses for his greater glory, our salvation, and the salvation of the world.  Every day we ought to give this permission to Almighty God, aligning our wills with his.