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Are You on the List?
6 min
Gospel
Mt 9:36-10:8
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zeb′edee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pay, give without pay.
Readings are taken from Dynamic Catholic’s Bible: RSV Catholic Edition.
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Transcript
Are You on the List?
Is there a word or a phrase or an idea that jumps out at you today from this reading?
You've got sort of these three sections, right? We've got Jesus looking at the crowds. He's got compassion. Why? They were harassed and helpless. There's lots of groups of people in our world who look out there and this description applies, right? They're harassed and helpless. And then you have the calling of the 12.
The naming of the twelve, and then you have the sending out. What is it that jumps out at you? I always like these little lists of like amazing things that Jesus is sending them out to do: heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. Now, we tend to think of ourselves as.
Not at all maybe in some of these lists, but the reality is every day like we're in these lists, heal the sick. Okay, in what ways am I sick?
In what way do I need healing from sickness?
Physical, mental, spiritual, whatever.
Heal the sick.
Then we got raise the dead. Okay, we probably don't think of ourselves as dead, but maybe there's a relationship in your life that's dead, or maybe there's some aspect of your life that's dead. Needs to be raised from the dead. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers. Pretty sure we don't think of ourselves as lepers, but you know. We've all got some form of leprosy, right? If you really think about it.
And cast out demons. And we've all got our demons. And so again, these lists become a formula, a prescription for prayer. Let's pray today. Let's really think about it. In what way do we need to be healed from our sickness? In what way do we need to be raised from the dead? In what way do we need to be cleansed like lepers? And in what way do we need demons cast out of us? Because when we see ourselves as we really are, in that way, as we really are, we see other people differently. And the primary difference is that we see them with tremendous compassion. We have tremendous compassion toward them. Let's go out in the world today, living the gospel, reflecting on the gospel, seeing the people like Jesus saw them, helpless, hapless, doing what we can, helping where we can, but in every case, where we can or cannot help, having tremendous compassion, the compassion of Jesus. He looked at them and he had compassion for them. Have a great day. And remember Be bold. Be Catholic.
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