Posted on 09/23/2020 3:36:48 PM PDT by MurphsLaw
MEMORIAL OF SAINT PIUS OF PIETRELCINA
LUKE 9:1-6
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus sends his disciples on mission: He summoned the Twelve . . . and he sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” As members of the Mystical Body, we share the mission of evangelization.
In accord with the subjectivism of our culture, many Christians think of their spiritual lives in an individualist way, as the cultivation of their personal friendship with God. But this overlooks something that the New Testament authors took for granted—namely, that Christians exist not for themselves but for the world.
Jesus compared his followers to salt, which is designed to preserve and enhance something other than itself, and to light, whose purpose is to be set on a stand in order to illumine what is around it. Pope St. Paul VI articulated the same truth as follows: the Church doesn’t have a mission; the Church is a mission.
We go forth, therefore, with God’s authority and empowered for his work. When we stand before the judgment seat of Christ he will ask whether we have taught the world how to praise, how to reverence the truth, how to go out vigorously on campaign to extend the kingdom of God.
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