HOMILY Fifteenth Sunday of Ord. Time Cycle B 07/14/2024

 HOMILY     Fifteenth Sunday of Ord. Time   Cycle B        07/14/2024

          In last week’s Gospel Jesus had a considerable setback.  You will remember He went to where He was raised, to His native place, and basically He flopped.  The people rejected Him, and took offense at Him, and we are told “He was amazed at their lack of faith.”  That is where last week’s Gospel left us.  Kind of a downer.

Now if Jesus were like me, and fortunately for us all He is NOT, following this rejection and failure He would have gone off for a while and been depressed, sad, angry, bitter, and generally in a bad mood.  Because that is how I handle rejection and failure, and even minor snubs.  And perhaps some of you also react in that way to being snubbed, rejected or ridiculed. 

But Jesus reacts differently.  The very next line in the Gospel is: “Jesus went around to the villages in the vicinity teaching.”  Jesus is undaunted by the failure, and continues with His mission.  In fact, in today’s Gospel, Jesus ramps up His efforts.  Our Gospel opens with “Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave the authority over unclean spirits.”  In other words, instead of being disappointed or hampered by His disastrous reception in His native place, Jesus expands His efforts to proclaim the Kingdom of God by sending out the twelve Apostles, two by two, to scale up the proclamation of the Good News. 

It was, in my opinion, a rather bold move.  Unhindered, Jesus doubles down on His mission.

Jesus instructs the Twelve to travel light, to be free from encumbrances.  He tells them: “take nothing for the journey but a walking stick – no food, no sack, no money in their belts.  They were, however,      to wear sandals but not a second tunic.”   In other words, to travel light.  Something that, as I am now packing to move, I can assure you is not easy to do.

Then Mark states: “So they went off and preached repentance.”     //   I find it interesting that they preached repentance.  That is, if you remember, the same message of John the Baptist.  REPENT!   This was obviously before the Resurrection, and so the Good News of Christ’s triumph over sin and over death could not yet be preached.  The twelve disciples preached repentance, not yet the message of salvation. 

My fellow Christians, there is a lesson in this Gospel for us.  Like the Twelve, we too are sent.  At the conclusion of every Mass we are sent forth to proclaim the Good News of God’s victory in Jesus Christ, and we are to do it by how we live our lives as well as by our words.

We will face opposition, disbelief, rejection and just plain lack of interest.  We have many opportunities to become discouraged.  But like Jesus we need to keep going.

We are sent to preach by our lives not only the message of repentance, but even more so the message of God’s love for every one of us in Jesus, that offers us victory over sin, and victory even over death.  That is GOOD NEWS!

So when you go out from Mass, and are sent to carry the message to the whole world, to your family, your class room, your workplace, your neighborhood, to the civic forum, to all the places and aspects of your life, don’t proclaim bad news.  Rather proclaim the GOOD NEWS of God’s love for everyone of us in Jesus Christ, that promises us victory over sin, victory even over death itself.     AMEN.