Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Following The Fisherman

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 7.6.22 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

FOURTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

MATTHEW 10:1–7

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus commissions the twelve Apostles.
Perhaps we can see here a fulfillment of his prophetic invitation to the first disciples:
“Come after me and I will make you fishers of men.”

“Come after me.”
This is a Hebraicism that indicates discipleship. Jesus is not offering a doctrine, a theology, or a set of beliefs.
He is offering himself.
He’s saying, “Walk in my path; enter into the world that I have opened up.”

“And I will make you fishers of men.”
This is one of the best lines in Scripture. Notice the first part of the phrase:
“I will make you.”
God is the one who makes us from nothing.
To live in sin is to live outside of the creative power of God,
to pretend that we can make ourselves.
How wonderful that he tells us that he will make us!

And what he makes us is always a reflection of himself:
a fisher of men.
God wants to draw all things and all people into a community around him, in him.
He is a fisher of people—and so wants us to be.

[MurphsLaw]

+++Jesus summoned his Twelve disciples
and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out
and to cure every disease and every illness.
The names of the Twelve Apostles are these:
first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew;
James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John;
Philip and Bartholomew,
Thomas and Matthew the tax collector;
James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus;
Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot
who betrayed Jesus.

Jesus sent out these Twelve after instructing them thus,
“Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town.
Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
As you go, make this proclamation:
‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”+++

[BuddhaBrown]

Unfortunately, the devil makes his followers fishers of children.

Many kids enter school with a foundation of sand. Easily swayed to the dark side by bait dangled from the author of confusion.

God-fearing parents should raise hell at school board meetings, of course. But don't bank on that protecting your kids from Satan's hook. Start teaching early and don't send them into the world without the inoculation of a sound foundation on the Rock.