Today's Gospel

Surprised by Betrayal

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we dive into the good book and reflect upon the gospel together and take a few minutes out of this crazy, noisy, busy world and think about what God is calling us to. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke chapter 6 verses 12 through 16. In these days, Jesus went out into the hills to pray. And all night he continued in prayer to God.

And when it was day, he called his disciples and chose from them 12, whom he named apostles, Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip and Bartholomew, and Matthew and Thomas, and James, the son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the zealot, and Judas, son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. What jumps out at you today? And why did the scribes decide to put this down? Why is this part of? These things, they ground the life and teachings of Jesus in history.

There's a lot of people from the very beginning who have wanted to say, "Well, Jesus is just a figment of Christian imagination." We know that isn't true, but we do need to firmly and even aggressively refute that argument at times, especially in our increasingly secular society. We know that Jesus was a person who lived in a particular place at a particular time. This is recorded, yes, by Christians, but it's also recorded by non-Christians. And we need to be mindful that, okay, Jesus was a real person in a real place. At a real time, this took place in history. And he chose 12. He chose 12 and one betrayed him.

And so maybe that's what jumps out at you today. Maybe someone's betrayed you. You live long enough on this earth, someone will betray you. And it's devastating. It demolish you, and we have to get back up from that. And part of getting up from that is realizing, okay, well, Jesus chose 12, and one of them betrayed him. The interesting thing is, is that we're so surprised when we're betrayed. And we're so surprised and we're surprised because we make false assumptions that Jesus said over and over, if they did these things to me, they're going to do worse to you.

And I think we make these assumptions, "Oh, that won't happen to me." And then it does happen. And it breaks that assumption. Well, it shines a light on that assumption and shows that assumption to be false. And so maybe what jumps out at you today is you've been betrayed, or maybe you've betrayed someone. And that wound needs to be healed. That wound needs to be cleaned. But the other thing might jump out at you today is mission. Jesus chooses these 12. He chooses them for mission. And maybe God's choosing you for mission right now in your life. And what does that look like?

Well, he might be calling you to be a priest. He might be calling you to be a deacon. He might be calling you to get married. But the mission he might be putting on your life right now, it might be to be a grandparent. Or the mission might be to coach and train young people in ways that so many of them desperately need to be mentored and coached and trained. So maybe mission is what jumps out at you today, but whatever word, phrase, or idea jumps out at you today, carry it with you throughout the day and allow God to continue to teach you the gospel throughout the day.

Have a great day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.