Ordinary people with big responsibilities

Good morning, happy Friday, and many blessings.

The Gospel today (Mark 3:13-19) describes the acceptance and mission of the twelve apostles. Jesus begins with two disciples to whom He adds two others. Gradually, the number increased. Luke tells us that He called the 72 disciples so as to go on mission with Him (Luke 10:1).

Like the apostles each of us is called by name or called into a profoundly personal and intimate relationship with Jesus. It is when we allow him to look on us in this way that we get a sense of our deepest significance and personal worth.

Discipleship is an important theme in Mark’s Gospel. The first disciples were non-entities yet are called by Jesus to form his first community. Resolute commitment in following of him is the necessary quality. They are to identify their entire lives with him. Empowered with his message, they would be heralds of the Good News. Jesus did not choose people because of what they were. He chose them for what they could become under his direction and power. Lord, I am nothing remarkable, yet you call me to be with you. Give me courage to serve you with generous commitment.

I may think I have chosen Jesus, but in fact he has chosen me. Like the apostles, I am chosen to be part of his mission. Imagine the apostles, having been chosen, looking at each other, and James and John turning to Andrew and asking, "Who's this Thaddeus guy?" They could well have been uneasy at rubbing shoulders with a reformed tax collector like Matthew, and a fanatical nationalist like Simon.

The Lord's choice of followers may surprise me, and at times I may have difficulties with them, but they are chosen, with their faults, just as I am. As I prayerfully read the names of the apostles, I realize that I know something about some of them, and little about others. Similarly, my life of faith is known to some yet hidden from many. I offer it all to God. Then he went home.’ It seems that Jesus was able to trust the apostles to act in his name to do what he did. In the same way he trusts me confident that his spirit is alive in me as I speak and act in his name.

Jesus selected very ordinary people, most of them hard-working fishermen with no social status, learning or political influence, because He was sure that they would be very effective instruments in God’s hands. It was a strange mixture of people. Jesus selected them after a night of prayer and gave them His own powers of healing and exorcism and His own mission of preaching the “Kingdom of God.”

As Christians we have the same mission that Jesus entrusted to His Apostles. We fulfill this mission of proclaiming the word of God primarily by our living out of Jesus’ teachings and by promoting and helping the world-wide missionary activities of the Church with prayer, moral support and financial aid.

Blessings,

Fr. Luis+