July 9, 2025 – Wednesday of the 14th week of Ordinary Time
Genesis 41:55-56; 42:5-7, 17-24; Matthew 10:1-7
Homily
The rabbis of Jesus' time surrounded themselves with a few disciples, with whom they lived in a school or at the gates of a city. Jesus chose a very different style. He was an itinerant rabbi who did not wait for disciples to come to Him but went out to meet them. He did not train His disciples with long speeches but simply took them along on His missionary journeys and sent them out on missions as well. He did not follow in the footsteps of the priests of His time (who were preoccupied with sacrifices and the people's money), nor did He follow in the footsteps of the Pharisees (a haughty elite), but rather in those of the great prophets and, beyond them, in the footsteps of Moses Himself.
The evangelist Matthew does not describe the institution of the Twelve. In his Gospel, instead of this institution, there are the ‘beatitudes’ in which Jesus establishes the Law of the New Covenant and through which He consequently founds His Church, the new Israel. The text first speaks of the ‘twelve disciples,’ who are mentioned here for the first time and who represent the entire People of Israel, composed of twelve tribes. To this people, represented by the twelve, He gives the power to do everything He Himself did: to cast out evil spirits and to heal every disease and infirmity. The text then goes on to give these twelve disciples the name of apostles. The mission referred to here is therefore a mission entrusted to His entire new people, to His Church, to all of us. All are called to have the same compassion as He did.
These twelve disciples – or twelve apostles – whom Jesus chose to send on mission are as diverse a group as possible. First there is Simon, called Peter, and his brother Andrew, then James and his brother John. We know almost nothing about the other seven (if we exclude what is recounted in the apocryphal Gospels or other late accounts of the same kind). And the list ends with the one who will betray him.
If we had been in Jesus' place, we would undoubtedly have chosen better-prepared collaborators and made sure they had everything they needed to fulfil such a difficult task as casting out evil spirits! Jesus chose a diverse group; He chose all of us, knowing full well that, like Moses with his people, He would have great difficulty in making His immediate disciples, and even more so all of us, understand the meaning of His mission, which is rooted in compassion for those who suffer and lack direction.
We know our limitations and weaknesses, but the mission entrusted to us is greater than ourselves. The one who entrusted it to us is always there to comfort and nourish us, as He will do in this Eucharist.
And let us not forget the last little sentence of our Gospel, which reminds us that all that we are and all that we have received, we have received freely. It is therefore freely that we must fulfil our mission as Christians, knowing that this vocation to the Gospel is not a privilege that we should preserve, but a grace to be shared.
Armand VEILLEUX