One of
the penalties of being religious is to be mocked and ridiculed. If Our Lord
submitted Himself to the ribald humour of a degenerate Tetrarch, we may be sure
that we, His followers, will not escape. The more Divine a religion is, the
more the world will ridicule you, for the spirit of the world is the enemy of
Christ
Fulton Sheen, Characters of the Passion, 1946:
56
The people of Israel in this morning’s first reading have
known much pain and desolation, exile, misery, the desecration and destruction
of the Temple. Here they have a word of comfort, of healing, hope for the
future. ‘As one whom his
mother comforts, so I will comfort you’ (66:13). It’s intimate, and
comforting, in that it speaks of God who shows love and care for us, and who
promises a future of peace. It reminds us that true peace and healing are the
gift of God, and a sign of his love. It is a love shown in its fullness in the
person and life of Jesus Christ; it is His suffering and death which bring us
peace beyond our understanding.
In this
morning’s Gospel we see something of the early spread of the Gospel, people are
sent out by Jesus to prepare the way for Him, they are to be prophets, heralds,
announcing the nearness of the Kingdom of God. They are sent out ‘as lambs in the midst of wolves’
it sounds risky and vulnerable, it’s not comfortable, it doesn’t make sense,
but that’s the point: only then can we be like the Lamb of God, and proclaim
his message of healing and reconciliation. If we’re concerned about the shortage
of labourers in the Lord’s vineyard, then we need to pray, to ask God to provide,
to trust and rely upon Him, and in His strength alone. Only then are we looking
at things the right way: if we trust ourselves, our strength and abilities, we
will fail. If we trust in God, all things are possible. It’s a hard lesson, and
in two thousand years we haven’t managed to learn it.
The heralds
of the kingdom travel light, unlike most of us: they are unencumbered by stuff,
and reliant upon others to provide what they do not have. They are dependent
upon the charity of others – they rely upon God and his people. They live out a
faith which stresses our interconnectedness, our reliance upon those other than
ourselves. It’s quite strange for us to hear, we’re used to being told that it’s
all about me, what I am, what I can do, what I have. These are the values and
ideas of the world; those of the kingdom are entirely different. The interesting
thing is that the seventy two listen to what Jesus tells them, they obey Him,
and when they return they have done what He asked them to do. Their obedience
bears fruit amidst the disobedience of the world, of selfishness and sin. Here
then is the pattern for our
lives, Christ calls us
to follow in the footsteps of the seventy two, to fashion our lives after their
example, so that we too might be heralds of the Kingdom. So that we can say
with the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Galatians: ‘But far be it from me to boast except
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to
me, and I to the world’ (Gal 6:14).
Such is the
power of the Cross: this instrument of humiliation and torture displays God’s
glory and saving love to the world. That is why we are here today to see the
continuation of that sacrifice enacted in front of our very eyes, to eat Christ’s
Body and drink His Blood, so that our human nature may be transformed by His
Grace, fed by God, with God, strengthened to live out our faith in our lives,
to walk in the light of this faith, as heralds of the Kingdom, proclaiming the
Gospel of repentance, of healing and reconciliation, brought about by Christ on
the Cross, so that the world may share in the new life of Easter, filled with
the Holy Spirit.
It is not an easy task, or indeed
a pleasant one, the world will mock us, as it mocked Him. It will tell us that
we are irrelevant and turn its back on us, just us it ignored Him. Let us trust
in Him, proclaiming His peace and mercy, so that the world may believe and be
transformed and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty,
glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
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