GOSPEL: Mark 6:7-13
Translated from
a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
_______________________________________________________
Don Fabio’s homily
follows the Gospel
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GOSPEL Mark 6:7-13
Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out in pairs giving
them authority over the unclean spirits. And he instructed them to take nothing
for the journey except a staff – no bread, no haversack, no coppers for their
purses. They were to wear sandals but, he added, ‘Do not take a spare tunic.’
And he said to them, ‘If you enter a house anywhere, stay there until you leave
the district. And if any place does not welcome you and people refuse to listen
to you, as you walk away shake off the dust from under your feet as a sign to
them.’ So they set off to preach repentance; and they cast out many devils, and
anointed many sick people with oil and cured them.
THE
GOSPEL OF THE LORD: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ
Kieran’s summary
. . . Just as the prophet Amos called for
conversion of hearts, so too the disciples of Jesus are sent to preach a pure
Gospel that will transform people’s hearts. Jesus gives the disciples a very
well-defined power: the authority over impure spirits. What does this refer to?
Something that is impure is something that contains within it a mixture of good
and bad elements. The most powerful forms of deception often contains elements
of truth or goodness in them. How often we try to sweeten the Gospel, compromising
it so that it fits in with our self-interested plans! Woe to the Church if it
does not preach true conversion to the pure message of the Gospel! Jesus tells
the disciples that if people reject the Gospel, then they are to shake the clay
of that town from their feet. Is this a condemnation of those people? No, it is
a statement of the purity of the Gospel and a way of testifying to that town
that they are being called to embrace the pure ground of the Gospel. It is a
way of saying: “The ground of our faith cannot be mixed or compromised with the
ground of the way of life that you lead, so I shake that ground from my feet as
a message to you that the Gospel must be accepted in its purity”. This Gospel also calls each one of us to conversion. We are called to allow ourselves to be cultivated and pruned by the Lord so that we too are converted to a pure observance of the Gospel.
The
Gospel purifies in the sense that it is not compatible with a mixture of good
and evil
The
theme of Sunday’s Gospel is the acceptance and the rejection of the
evangelizing mission of the disciples. The first reading contains the
celebrated passage in which the prophet Amos is banished by the king for
preaching conversion. But first let us consider the Gospel. Jesus calls the
twelve to himself and sends them out two by two. This is a sign of communion;
no one goes out by himself; the disciples must know how to cooperate with
another and not insist on working in a purely individualistic way. It is
communion, after all, that brings salvation to the world. Jesus gives the
disciples a very precise power: the authority over unclean spirits. The heart of the human being is very prone to
allowing itself to be confused. An impure spirit is one that lacks discernment
and confounds good with evil, mixing them in an illegitimate and deceptive way.
The
Gospel must be delivered in a simple and pure way, not for profit or with a
concern for material gain. We must not “wear other hats” when we preach the
Gospel.
The
disciples are to carry only a walking stick, no bread, no haversack and no
money. The Church, thus, is expected to carry out its mission without foraging
for profit, without being weighed down with material baggage, money or
structures. Evangelizing is a business that requires constant journeying from
the Father towards humanity. We must engage in this movement from within, not
in a self-referential way. The order to bring only one change of clothes refers
to the point that we must only seek to be that which the Father sends us to be;
we must not try to take on or usurp other roles.
What does
it mean “to shake the dust of that town from one’s sandals”?
The
evangelizer must go into people’s homes, to the places where people eke out
their existence. And the preacher will discover that people know how to welcome
God. Humanity knows how to open its heart wide to salvation. The Gospel passage,
in fact, recounts the success of the mission of the disciples. They receive a
great welcome and manage to heal people’s infirmities. The word of God is
something that can be well received. It can also be refused, and in this case
Jesus instructs the disciples to shake the dust of that town from their feet as
a testimony to them. Shaking the dust off of the feet is a sign that there is
no relationship between the disciples and the people of that town. There is no
happy interchange between us; you and I are not of the same ground; I come from
one land and you from another. There is a temptation when we preach the Gospel
to seek a compromise with those to whom we preach. Common ground is all too
often not the ground of conversion
but the ground of banality. It is important to state clearly that I come from a
different sort of land. If you do not welcome me, then your ground remains
yours; it does not become mine. This shaking off of the dust is not a
condemnation onto death; it is a genuine witness
to those townspeople that is directed towards illuminating them of the pure
nature of the Gospel.
The true
prophet teaches a hard message of conversion but leads the people to life and
joy
It
is in this vein that the prophet Amos speaks. He does not react with
condemnation to the order of banishment from the prophet Amaziah. Instead he
says, “I was not a prophet nor the son of a prophet. I was a shepherd and a
cultivator of sycamores”. This work of tending sycamores consisted in piercing
the fruit of the tree and allowing some of their juice to escape so that they
would develop correctly and become edible. In other words, Amos did not come from a
school of prophets; he had no great theological formation; his only talents consisted
in tending sheep and piercing sycamores. He knew how to improve the fruit of
the tree and how to lead the flock to water and grass. Instead of condemning
Amaziah, Amos is saying that his skills are these and he has come to apply them
here in this other context.
We must
allow ourselves to be pruned by God so that we develop an authentic
relationship with him. Then we are in a position to call others to conversion.
And we must call them to conversion instead of compromising what we believe or “sweetening”
the Gospel to make it more palatable to others
What
must the person who wishes to receive the Gospel be prepared to accept? He must
be prepared to be pierced, to be made to bleed a little, but also to be led to
life. We must be willing to allow God to cultivate us, to plant us, to prune us
(as John 15 tells us); we must be ready to accept the challenge so that the
ground of God becomes our ground. These two grounds must become one. In the
Incarnation, the man made of clay becomes a divine being. This involves
welcoming the prophetic spirit, allowing ourselves to be corrected and to be
led into true pastures. How many people look to pasture only themselves,
becoming the focus and centre of their own lives. We must recognize that we
need to be led by God. The twelve disciples who are sent out are characterized
by their relationship with God, calling others to obedience and conversion. Woe
to us if we are a Church that does not call to conversion but instead agrees
and compromises with everything. How blessed we are if we become signs of this
relationship, not having other roles or outfits that we wear, focusing instead
on calling people to the ground of God, calling them to be transformed and
transfigured by the good news of Jesus.
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