FOURTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Prayer and Action… He sent them two by two… Proclaim and Heal!

The Readings for this Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, proclaimed in the liturgical assemblies, place before us the expectations and yearnings of men as a People and the Hope announced by the mouth of the prophets, which find fulfillment in the presence of the Son of God, the Messiah, who places in prayer and action the foundation of the entire mission of proclaiming the proximity of the Kingdom of God, bearing as an eloquent sign the Cross of Christ, from which springs the new creature.

Thus, in the Prophet Isaiah, hope in new times for the People of God is the word that keeps their expectation alive and that encourages, with the call to joy, the faith of those people and their own desires for happiness. The People lived in this expectation of a kingdom renewed by the awaited Messiah, in which God would restore peace and grant his faithful the experience of endless joy, finding in Jerusalem, the Holy City, the mouth where “rivers of Peace” would flow.

Therefore, the prophetic mission had in mind the People who needed to be encouraged, encouraged and hopeful for a better future time, remembering the greatness and glory of the past and keeping alive the hope that God did not abandon His People, but rather, in their midst, pointed them towards a future of Happiness and Joy.

In the Gospel text, Jesus sends seventy-two disciples on a mission with the certainty that they must proclaim, “the Kingdom of God is near you.” This mission has the characteristic of sending the seventy-two disciples, two by two, the characteristic of working together and not each one going off alone.

Therefore, the characteristics of this Mission are contained in the words of Jesus, which still present us with important challenges today: The first is based on prayer… Pray ; the second… Go , and then: Take no purse or bag (detachment); say: Peace to this house… stay in that house… do not go from house to house… heal the sick who are there and say to them: The Kingdom of God is near you… and if they do not receive you, go out into the marketplace and say goodbye.

Thus, the Mission that Jesus entrusts is always based on prayer, it is itinerant and non-stop, it demands detachment and poverty, it brings peace and healing, as signs of the proximity of the Kingdom of God, it is an announcement and testimony, and it also demands evangelical frankness and freedom to be assumed and carried out, always keeping in mind that the message of Salvation can be rejected.

Therefore, today the mission of the Church must be seen with these eyes, so that we can understand that it is not an individual task, but a community one, going two by two reveals the ecclesial presence and the presence of the Holy Spirit himself; it is a task that always has prayer as its priority basis, ensuring that prayer and action always go hand in hand, avoiding falling into extremes: a prayer that is disembodied from reality or an activism devoid of the Spirit of God.

If, in order to welcome the Good News of Salvation, The Kingdom of God is near to you , Jesus says first to give them Peace, in our time and in our world, so deprived of this good, the Church has as its Mission today, to be the bearer of this Hope of Peace, on a path as difficult as it is challenging.

This Peace that springs from the presence of Christ in the hearts of those who receive Him, because we are convinced that Jesus is in fact our Peace, therefore, it is Christ that we take to the world as Peace for the World itself.

“You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit”, thus, the Mission that was entrusted to us by the One who chose us, must be carried out based on the One who shows us the way and we must not allow ourselves to be carried away by the impulse of our human qualities, our merit or personal aptitudes, because we know that God gives us the ability to do something in His Name by His benevolence.

Thus, the awareness that we are mere instruments of God, and not the main actors in an adventure, should be the characteristic note of the disciple’s humility. For this reason, Saint Paul, in the second reading, leaves us his example: “Far be it from me to boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Carlos Manuel Dionisio de Sousa