15th Sunday in Ordinary Time - year B (14.07.2024)

1. "Jesus called the Twelve to himself and began to send them out two by two". Each evangelist recounts the choice and mission of the apostles: this Sunday it is St Mark who narrates the beginning of the missionary mandate of the Twelve chosen from among the disciples (Luke lists 72) and formed by Jesus keeping them close to him. Now however is the time to go on mission, but to be an apostle one must learn to remain a disciple and the disciple is the one who does not tire of learning from the master Jesus the art of evangelising. One does not learn it in a short time and the first condition that will then become permanent is precisely that of never detaching oneself from Jesus, the only true Master. Indeed, it is only by remaining a disciple of Jesus that the apostle can carry out the mission of proclaiming and witnessing to the gospel. Missionaries are not only the apostles, but every baptised person according to their specific vocation and charisma, and the richness of Christianity is the multiplicity of vocations at the service of the one cause: the Kingdom of God. The risk is that of wanting to be apostles without remaining disciples. The early Church spread like wildfire thanks to the fact that the twelve apostles did not forget that Jesus had chosen them to be with him and to go and proclaim the gospel with the power to cast out demons: "he gave them power over unclean spirits". Only three were the tasks he entrusted to them: to go together two by two, to keep the bare minimum for themselves and not to be frightened by inevitable persecutions. He sends them two by two because in the Jewish culture and mentality of the time for a testimony to be acceptable it had to be of at least two persons (cf. Deut 19:15) and since evangelising is bearing witness to what Jesus said and did, it cannot be the task of a single individual. After Pentecost the apostles will continue in this style: Peter and John will preach together in the temple in Jerusalem (Acts 1); Paul and Barnabas will be together in Syria and Asia Minor (Acts 13-15) and even after their separation Paul will continue his mission with Sulla (Acts 16-17) while Barnabas will take Mark with him. Secondly he asks them to make do with the bare essentials: just a stick, no food, no sack, no money, a pair of sandals and no spare tunic. Thus began the long journey of the Church and to continue it faithfully requires agility of movement, absolute readiness to serve the gospel and detachment from everything: these are valid, indeed indispensable, conditions for every evangeliser to neither give in to compromises with the world, nor allow themselves to be impressed by the persecutions they will encounter. The apostles had witnessed the failure of Jesus in Nazareth (Mk.6:1-6) and they will be reminded of this when they will have to face the same fate because of the obstinate opposition of the scribes and Pharisees and then in the persecutions that will follow.

2. It is indeed true: opposition and even persecution are the fate of Christ's disciples as it was of the prophets in the Old Testament. In today's first reading we meet the prophet Amos who was rejected by Amasias, priest of Bethel, after a few months of preaching: "Go away, seer" (7:12) and although hindered, he continued tirelessly in his opposing mission.  Like him, all prophets suffered the same fate and Jesus experienced it as the evangelist Mark recounted last Sunday: 'A prophet is not despised except in his own country, among his relatives, and in his own house. Anyone who decides to convert to Christ and intends to be his apostle must be prepared to experience the same opposition and even outright rejection. A question then arises: "Why is it that the preaching of God's love and forgiveness open to all, which sums up the proclamation of the gospel, always meets with incomprehension and opposition?" Let us not forget that Jesus "gave the apostles power over unclean spirits": when God's gratuitous love is proclaimed, Satan's hatred is unleashed, which in different ways confuses the human soul. He clouds the mind and pollutes it with the most diverse ideas about God, as we read for example in the book of Exodus: "The Lord said to Moses: 'I have looked upon this people: behold, they are a hard-necked people'" (Ex.32:7-14), but above all he hardens the heart. In order not to give in to discouragement, it is useful to always have before one's eyes the image of Jesus crucified and to think of the many martyrs who have followed in his footsteps, while the Lord continues to remind all of them: "Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me" (Mt 10:37-42).

3. Alongside many who open their hearts to the gospel there are others who reject it, and Jesus in this regard does not invite us to react with violence and contempt, but to respect freedom by not forcing anyone. He says in fact: "If in any place they do not welcome you and do not listen to you, go away and shake the dust from under your feet as a testimony to them". Shake the dust from your feet: how should this gesture be interpreted as a testimony for people?  Benedict XVI explains: "Jesus warns the Twelve that it may happen that in some places they will be rejected. In that case, they will have to go elsewhere, after having made the gesture of shaking the dust under their feet in front of the people, a sign that expresses detachment in two senses: moral detachment - as if to say: the proclamation has been given to you, it is you who reject it - and material detachment - we did not want and do not want anything for ourselves (cf. Mk 6:11)" (Holy Mass Frascati 15 July 2012).  In short, Jesus invites us not to give in to discouragement in the face of defeat, but to start again, always walking with feet freed even from the dust. While it is true that hardened and hostile hearts are encountered, the spiritual satisfactions are many more, and the growth of Christian communities is proof of the power of the risen Christ. Right from the beginning, in the Acts of the Apostles, there are accounts of people everywhere who opened their homes and hearts to the preachers of the gospel, and the flow of evangelisation has continued unstoppable over the centuries. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini writes: 'Lean on the Gospel, trust the Gospel. The word 'faith', in its long history - in the Old Testament, in the Bible, in the Hebrew version of Scripture - represents the situation of one who trusts, of one who leans on a rock, of one who feels firm because he is leaning on someone much stronger than he is." (6th meeting of the School of the Word, 6.11.1980)

+ Giovanni D'Ercole

P.S. Faced with those who predict the death of the Church at all times, St John Henry Newman, an English cardinal converted to Catholicism and canonised by Pope Francis, writes: "The Church possesses this special privilege, which no other religion has: that of knowing that, having been founded at the first coming of Christ, it will not disappear before his return. In every generation, however, it seems to succumb and its enemies triumph. The struggle between the Church and the world has this peculiarity: the world always seems to win, but in fact it is she who wins. Her enemies constantly triumph, claiming victory; her members often lose hope. But the Church remains!" (Cf. Sermons on the Themes of the Day, No. 6, Faith and Experience, 2.4)