In today’s Gospel, Jesus sends the chosen twelve disciples out two by two to do what he has been doing for maybe 3-4 months. It is interesting to put this choice of his in context. As presented in Mark’s Gospel, these chosen twelve were chosen a very short time ago—in chapter 3. Since Jesus was traveling around Galilee and they were following him, they doubtless had witnessed what Jesus did to engage, encounter, and witness to people in each village. So, they had a bit of a plan for what to do. But they were new recruits—and had just witnessed the rejection of Jesus by his own native community in Chapter 5.
Mark 6:7-13
What was Jesus thinking? What effect did the Nazareth rejection have on him? Was he wondering if others might be more successful? Or perhaps the rejection gave him awareness that rejection was going to be an integral part of his and their mission, so he might as well have them begin with that expectation.
Right after today’s reading comes the notation of John the Baptist’s death. Maybe the Holy Spirit knew that would be a blow to them all, so they needed some success in evangelizing before they heard that news.
Whatever Jesus’ logic, he sends them out with some spiritual powers—to cast out demons, to preach repentance, and to anoint the sick and heal them.
Jesus also sends them with practical guidance: go in twos, carry next to nothing, stay in one house. Expect some places to reject you; learn from the beginning to shake off rejection—literally by shaking the dust off your feet.
Applying This Today
I attended a Day of Recollection at St. Meinrad on Thursday. It was for us Oblates on St. Benedict’s Feast Day. The title was “Faith in a Secular Age: The Promise of Oblation.” While the purpose of the conferences was to help us see how our Benedictine practices of lectio divina, hospitality, and community strengthen our witness of faith, there was a great deal of information that I had never heard presented so clearly about our secular age.
I perceived for the first time how much the secular culture’s foundational belief that either God doesn’t exist or he doesn’t matter creates a culture radically different from Christian culture. In Christian culture, defined through the ages, God creates the world and rules it. He rules in love, but he rules. In this schema, God is the most important thing. We live to become like him and to make the world more like him. God is the center and source of meaning in life.
The secular culture around us, developing since the Age of Enlightenment (about the time of the beginnings of the US), has put the individual happiness of people into the position of what is the meaning of life. While a deistic perspective of God was present in the beginnings of this process, over time God has faded to what might bring happiness to some people, so it is OK for them, but not a reality of life. As a result, over these last 400 years or so, we put God in his place on Sunday morning, times of need, and celebration of life-changing sacraments, but otherwise focus our lives on what we do, how we feel, what we have, and relationships that work for us. We pay some attention to God–to keep on his good side, but our lives are what give meaning. What no longer pleases us or disturbs us, we label as useless and toss it away. That is what it means to live in a secular age.
I had heard and even talked about all that before, but, somehow, I had always done it with my faith glasses on—sort of as if this were some passing fad my children were into that would soon pass. I have seen all those phenomena as indications that people need to be better educated in faith, liturgies need to be more inspiring, and we as faith-filled people need to stick together. If we do, the people who are no longer at mass, who do not believe in the True Presence of Christ in the sacraments, and who live by a mixture of God’s standards and cultural standards will “see the light” and join us again.
I have identified with those disciples going out today two by two. I have believed that the world around me is like Galilee. And, honestly, I have been evangelizing like I’m with them in Galilee—with some good effect on people who have some faith.
Amos 7:12-15
But there is a continuum of faith—from trust that God is the Creator and rightful ruler of all human life to a seeking atheist’s cry of “I don’t believe in God and I miss him.”
Maybe my evangelization needs to be more like Amos. Amos was a farmer. God called him to leave the more religious Judah and speak prophecy to the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 8th century BC. I quote what the Didache Bible says in its introduction to the book of Amos, “The theme of Amos is that there is one sovereign and omnipotent God who governs human history, and all nations are subject to him. God chose Israel for his people, but this relationship placed responsibility upon them to respond to him and to keep his Law…Amos emphasized that the true practice of the faith is more than just ritual purity and worship, but rather includes a moral and social dimension. The faithful must practice justice and reach out to the poor.” (p 1135)
That sounds like Pope Francis!
Mission to the Secular Culture
I’m still reeling from Thursday’s conferences by Fr. Thomas Gricoski, OSB. I’m mixing what he said with what I know as a family therapist. Sometimes, you can’t make things better by doing what you already know to do in a better way. That’s first-order change. Sometimes, you have to enter into the system as a warm, caring person with understanding from outside the system and behave in a way that intrigues, nurtures, confronts, and demonstrates, then patiently supports, not only a new way to DO, but a new way to BE. That’s second-order change.
I know how to do that with a family to get them to trade symptoms and dysfunction for new skills and loving behaviors.
I don’t know how to intrigue, nurture, confront, demonstrate, and patiently support folks deep in secular culture to help them move into Christian culture.
But I see the light and I want to learn.
The good, good, good news is that there are places in the world where the Church and the Faith are GROWING. These are places less immersed in the personal pursuit of happiness and defined by individual desires. They are places where family and community needs outweigh individual needs and interests. They are mostly developing countries.
I found an interesting article online about growth and decline in the Catholic Church.
“Viewed from the West, it’s easy to conclude that the Church is shrinking. In Western Europe and parts of the U.S., parishes are closing and consolidating. It is also unclear what effect the Covid-19 Pandemic has had on church attendance, but we are unlikely to witness a lasting bounce back in attendance. Formal religious affiliation and commitment, along with being an active member of a parish, are all declining.
Yet from 267 million Catholics in 1900 to 1.05 billion in 2000 and 1.36 billion today, the Catholic Church has expanded more through the last 100 years than any time in its 2,000 years of existence. The 16 million new Catholics of 2020 is more than the entire Catholic population of Canada. In other words, the global Catholic story is not one of steady decline, but rather rapid growth.” Read the article here.
Wow!
Today’s selection from Ephesians includes the kerygma, the message of the wonder and glory of living a life centered on God who is REAL . THAT is the message that is causing people in Africa to come spend the whole day at church on Sunday in Nigeria, even though they are outside in the heat and there is a growing roster of Christian martyrs there. That is the message that can also attract our families, friends, and neighbors.
Here it is expressed in today’s epistle from Ephesians:
In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ,
in accord with the favor of his will,
for the praise of the glory of his grace
that he granted us in the beloved.
In him we have redemption by his blood,
the forgiveness of transgressions,
in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us.
Wow again!
Prayer
Lord, thank you for the kerygma, your great message of repentance, love, and hope that you sent out with the disciples in Galilee, with Amos, and with generations of Christian missionaries. Make me like them! I do not believe that you have given up on the Western world, but it seems we need to think and act differently to evangelize those who are complacent in faith and those who are outside faith. Help us copy from African, South American, and Asian missionaries. Lead me, guide me, Lord, to be an Amos—as well as a disciple visiting and witnessing to the people around me—as well as a disciple on fire to the secular world around me with the “riches of grace” to “sum up all things in Christ.” Give me light; make me light. Make me fire!
