Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - A Priestly Mission

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 7-12-23 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Matthew 10:1–7

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus summons Apostles whom he shapes and sends on mission.
Priests, through the centuries—from Augustine and Aquinas,
to Francis Xavier and John Henry Newman, to John Paul II—
are the descendants of those first friends and apprentices of the Lord.
They have been needed in every age, and they are needed today,
for the kingdom of heaven must be proclaimed,
the poor must be served,
God must be worshiped,
and the sacraments must be administered.

Spiritual fathers are required especially in our time,
when a rising tide of secularism threatens to overwhelm the religious impulse.
We are wired for God;
we will never satisfy the deepest longing of our hearts apart from God.

The secularist ideology teaches that sufficient amounts
of wealth, pleasure, power, or honor will make us happy.
Who will counter this?
Who will speak to this culture of the beauty of God?
Who will remind us that our lives are not about us?
Who will break open the words of the Gospel
and spread out the banquet table of Christ’s Body and Blood?
This is why we need priests.

[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.'" +++