6 December 2025 - Saturday of the 1st week of Advent
Is 30, 19-21.Is 30, 19-21. 23-26; Mt 9, 35--10, 1. 6-823-26; Mt 9, 35--10, 1. 6-8
Homily
The rabbis of Jesus' time surrounded themselves with a few disciples, with whom they lived in a school or on the outskirts of a town. Jesus chose a completely different style. He was an itinerant rabbi who did not wait for the disciples to come to Him, but rather went out to meet them Himself. He did not train his disciples with long speeches, but simply involved them in His missionary journeys and also sent them on mission to these crowds ‘ tired and downcast like sheep without a shepherd ’. He was by no means in the tradition of the priests of His time (preoccupied with sacrifices and the people's money) and even less in that of the Pharisees (a haughty elite), but rather in that of the great prophets of Israel.
The Evangelist Matthew does not describe the institution of the Twelve. In his Gospel, instead of this institution, we find the ‘beatitudes’ in which Jesus establishes the Law of the New Covenant and with which he consequently founds His Church, the new Israel. The text we have just read speaks first of the ‘twelve disciples’, who are mentioned here for the first time in Matthew's Gospel and who represent the entire People of Israel, made up of twelve tribes. To this people, represented by the twelve, he gives power to do all that he himself did: to expel evil spirits and to heal from every disease and infirmity. Then the text goes on to give the name of apostles to these twelve disciples (our lectionary has skipped this list, which begins with Simon Peter and ends with Judas). The mission we are talking about here is therefore a mission entrusted to the whole of His new people, to His Church, to all of us. We are all called to share His compassion.
These twelve disciples - or twelve apostles - whom Jesus chose to send on mission are as heterogeneous a group as possible. If we had been in Jesus' shoes, we would no doubt have chosen better-prepared collaborators and made sure that they had everything they needed to carry out a task as difficult as driving out evil spirits! Jesus chose a motley crew, 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.
We know our limits and our weaknesses; but the mission entrusted to us is greater than we are. The One who entrusted it to us is always there to comfort and nourish us, as he will do in this Eucharist.
And let's not forget the last little sentence of our Gospel, which reminds us that everything we are and have received, we have received freely. It is therefore free that we must carry out all our services - in the community or in the Church - knowing that our vocation to the Gospel is not a privilege that we should preserve, but a grace to be shared - first and foremost with those around us.
Armand VEILLEUX