1.Amos
7:12-15
|
2.Ephesians
1:3-14
|
3.Mark
6:7-13
|
In our daily lives,
most of us especially workers and students we involve ourselves in going for
holidays. An important experience of a holiday is leaving the familiar, the
place we usually live and work, and heading off to a different place of different
environment set up. Moreover, there is always something exciting about setting
out on such a journey. There are is always other journeys in life that are not
of our choosing in quite that way. These are journeys we make because of
circumstances, because at some level of our vocation we feel called that we
must make them. Something within us moves us to certain path, to head out in a
certain direction. However, we may have all kinds of hesitations and
reservations about the journey simply because of difficulties a head of journey
set before us, nonetheless, we know we have to set out on this path, if we are
to be true to ourselves. Yes, we choose to make such a journey, but it is a
choice in response to what seems like a call from beyond ourselves or from deep
within ourselves.
Such a journey is put
before us in today’s first reading. Amos, according to himself, was a shepherd
and a dresser of sycamore trees in the southern kingdom of Judah. Yet, at a
certain moment in his life, he felt under compulsion to make a difficult
journey into the Northern kingdom of Israel in order to preach the word of God
there. It was unpleasant journey for Amos to make, and Amos was well aware that
it would be no holiday. Yet, he also knew that this was a journey he simply had
to make. He spoke of this compulsion in terms of God’s call: ‘The Lord.... took
me from herding the flock and said...said “Go”.’ Amos went because he had a
strong sense that he was being sent for a mission. Similarly, in the gospel,
the disciples set out on a journey because they are sent on that journey by
Jesus. They set out freely, but in response to a call, a sending.
The experience of Amos
and the disciples can be our experience too, setting out on a journey not
completely our choosing (the call to religious and priestly formation). The
second reading suggests the mystery of God’s purpose for our lives. It says
that God wants us to live in a certain way, to live our life’s journey as Jesus
did. As we tend to set out our journeys, we always need to allow God to guide
and protect us in our journeys we set before. The journey set before us is the
journey we are constantly remaking. Throughout our lives we keep on setting out
on the journey God is calling us to take; thus it is an invitation to keep on
calling God to have his way in our lives, saying with our Mother Mary, ‘ Let it
be done according to your word.’
If we keep choosing the
journey that God has chosen for us in Christ, responding to God’s call, this
will impact on the many smaller journeys we take in life. It will influence our
holidays for example. We will choose to holiday in ways that are genuinely
recreational, that help re-create the image of Christ in us. We will relax in
ways that are life-giving for ourselves and for others, in ways that help us to
become more fully the person God wants us to be.
We hear Jesus telling
his disciples from the gospel reading to take nothing for their journey except
a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, ( Mt 6:8). Jesus commanded
his disciples to do so because the spirit of poverty frees each one of us from
greed and preoccupation. With the spirit of possession thus there is no room
for God. The Lord Jesus wants his disciples to depend on the providence of God
instead of depending on them.
From our gospel reading
today, we get a message that mission is at the heart of the Church. The mission
of the church is not a private affair business, but rather, it is the shared
ministry. The mission of Christ calls active collaboration from all the
baptized members of Christ’s family. Christ in sending his disciples into
mission two by two gives an indication that his mission he had already
established here on earth is not a private affair mission; rather, it is the
mission that has to involve each one of us. Collaborative ministry in our
church today should be pastorally encouraged. The disciples by acting in Jesus’
authority gives us an impression that they have to say and act in accordance
with what Jesus said and did. The mission of Jesus should be done in the spirit
of service and humility. The mission of Jesus is not a self gratification and
should not be done in an arrogant manner, but it should be done in humble
spirit of serving one another.
The mission of Christ
aims at the total person; in the gospel Jesus sends out his disciples not only
with the call to repent, to convert people but to heal them from sickness and
all powers of evil. The human person is to be saved in the concrete realities
of his/her existence. This means that a human person has to be treated in all
his/her dimensions of life, a human person should be treated socially,
physically, and spiritually. We can cure others by our love, encouragement,
affirmation, forgiveness, acceptance of their failures etc. In our times we are
invited to cast devils of fear, anxiety, worry, guilt by our ways of life we
display to our brothers and sisters being victims of mentioned emotions above.
But there is no link to the second reading.
JibuFuta