06/07/2025

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Although I can never forget the sinfulness that has been the hallmark of most of my life I sometimes feel that I too can be an active part of the revelation that in today's readings begins nearly 3000 years ago with Isaiah, confirms itself in the peaceful liturgical beauty of the psalms and as "bodily stigmata" is proclaimed by St. Paul.

In today's Gospel Jesus appoints 72 of his disciples to become the means by which the "Chosen People" are reminded that it is to bear witness to the Love that God has for them that they have been brought into the world.

The 72 are not remodelled as angels. They remain men in this world but abandon all attachments to the past and provision for the future as they become the first missionaries of the gestating New Testament. We do not know their names but they are certainly not "Anonymous Christians", can there be any such?,  for they are known and loved, as are all of us, in the perfection of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT but  "in those days" also in the "Real-Time Presence" of Son.

This "precursory Church" has no need of any sort of dogmatic or hierarchic structure for God is with them. Each one of the pairs is blessed by God and receives the Word that is to be preached directly from God.

Similarly during his dying moments on Calvary Our Saviour spoke directly to Mary and John. We can be sure that it is out of that divine commission to mother and friend that the Church of Love receives Grace to overcome the failings that have been and still are apparent in the Institution founded on Peter that has not lived up to " My Kingdom is not of this World". 

Jesus warned the returning first missionaries that there is only one outcome to life and mission that can be counted as life lived to fulfilment. We must never lose sight of Our Father and his will for us that will lead us all to Life Everlasting. Amen