(Exodus
19:2-6; Romans 5:6-11; Matthew 9:36 –10:8)
In the first reading we heard what the Lord expected of the
house of Israel after having rescued them, through Moses, from their slavery in
Egypt:
'You have seen what I did to
the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to
Myself. Now therefore, if you will
indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure
to Me above all peoples; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests
and a holy nation.'
That love for the children of Abraham which had led God to thus
save Israel from slavery, was now moving Him to exalt them yet further by offering
to make them into a holy nation and a kingdom of priests for the glory of His
Name and the benefit of mankind:
Now, if you obey Me, (although)
all the earth is Mine, you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy
nation.
However, Israel did not come – thanks to the hatred of the
Temple Authorities and the jealous opposition of the Scribes and Pharisees -- to
fully recognize Jesus as the Son sent by God, His heavenly Father, for mankind’s
salvation. And so, God has done an even
greater work In our New Testament times for those Israelites who did form the original
members of Jesus’ Apostolic community, and all those Gentiles who subsequently
have come to believe in His name and walk in His ways, as St. Paul tells us:
While we were still helpless,
at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
One will hardly die for a righteous man -- though perhaps for a good man
someone would dare even to die -- but God demonstrates His own love toward us
in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by
His blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God by His life.
God has -- through Jesus -- freed us, not just from
external slavery such as Israel suffered in Egypt, but from the far more
insidious, oppressive and destructive, slavery to sin and death. And
what is yet inconceivably much more, He offers us an opportunity to win
eternal happiness and personal fulfilment in heaven as His adopted children in
Jesus.
Having done that wondrous work of salvation for us through
His beloved Son Jesus, God now calls us, as Jesus’ true disciples in Mother
Church, to participate in that glorious work now to be accomplished, of
continuing Jesus’ mission by extending God’s offer of salvation to the whole of
mankind and to the end of time:
For the LORD is good; His
mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations. (Psalm 100:5)
Therefore, it is no surprise that we find in the Gospel
that:
When (Jesus) saw the multitudes,
He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered,
like sheep having no shepherd. Then He
said to His disciples, "The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers
are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the
harvest to send out labourers into His harvest."
We can understand a little something of the compassion of
Jesus as He looked on the crowd, for we know from our own experience of life in
a trans-gender, disbelieving and irreligious world, that there is no happiness
in sin or spiritual ignorance: for just as sin inevitably breeds harm, hurt, death,
and revenge, so does ignorance of our spiritual calling, debase our humanity. Even for those deliberately taking no account
of sin, our earthly life offers no real
fulfilment of itself: because such a ‘sinless’ life inevitably involves frustrations
and compromises of all sorts, that is, it is faceless, without
fulfilment, and always ends in suffering and loss, that is, in death of which the
confines open only to the voice of Jesus calling His sheep to obey the Spirit
He has sent them, and walk confidently in His ways to their heavenly home.
Jesus’ loving obedience to His Father led Him to sweat
blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, so great was the need of mankind, so real
our servitude to the horror of sin, and so consuming the Devil’s hatred for
this Man from Nazareth!
That is why -- having done such a glorious work through,
and at such cost to, His beloved Son -- God the Father now wants us to
continue that work of His Son, in the power of His Spirit sent by the risen
Jesus to be with us for ever. This, dear
people, is not an optional matter; it is something we need to do or else risk losing
our share in the salvation won for us through Jesus’ life, death, and
resurrection, by slipping back into the worldly ‘business-of-life’ concerns,
and the search for satisfactions along the way.
Obviously, we are not all called to be missionaries in the
sense of priests and religious going out in the name of Christ and His Church
to foreign lands, leaving home, family, and all earthly prospects. We are, however, all called and obliged to
help the spread of the Good News of Jesus.
This we can and must do, FIRST OF ALL, by fighting against sin and the devil
in our own lives All of us must,
in that way, share the mission of the Church to save mankind in the name
of Christ; for just as our personal, private, sins harm the whole Church, so
too, our personal, even hidden, virtues benefit the whole Body of Christ. None of us are unable to fulfil that
work of becoming a healthy member of the Body of Christ, thanks to the power which
Jesus gives through the presence in Mother Church and in our lives of His most
Holy Spirit.
There are many and varied ways to serve as truly
apostolic witnesses to Jesus, which, according to our circumstances and our
gifts, are for our choice, as Jesus showed us when, for example, He said (Mark
14:7):
You have the poor with you
always, and whenever you wish you may do them good.
But, dear People of God, do notice those few words He then
went to add:
But Me
you do not have always.
Those are heart-stopping, stupendous, words for all walking
lovingly along the ways of Jesus. Love
of Jesus, love of God, is not something one can put off to a later date, a
better situation! Love of God, love of
Jesus, can only be grasped, seized, if and when offered by the
Spirit-at-work-your- heart, disciple of Jesus!!
And when that happens, yes …. at the very beginning, thank
the Holy Spirit, and pray that He may lead you ever on and on, to truer
love for Jesus and the Father Who sent Him, and ultimately to a death with Him, in the Spirit,
for the Father
