By Fr. Dennis Geoghegan OCSO Week 14 Friday 12 7 2013 Mt 10: 16 – 23 In today’s gospel Jesus urges us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. In other words “don’t” be stupidly vulnerable. Use your loaf in dealing with evil. Don’t be easily taken in by temptation. At the same time be like doves: peaceful, harmless, non-violent. For any occasions when we have fallen short of fulfilling our Lord’s precept’s let us ask forgiveness. “Behold I send you out – as sheep in the midst of wolves”. Our Lord’s first words ring out like a challenge. “Behold I send you out”. It sounds almost like battle cry, like “once more into the breach”. So we may feel rather let down, deflated, when he adds, “as sheep”. “I send you out as sheep”. (Wouldn’t tigers be better?) Most people would prefer not to be compared with sheep – because in most people’s eyes sheep are not the most impressive of animals. But the challenge of discipleship is precisely the challenge to give up the worlds standards of heroism. We know this from the beatitudes and our Lord’s command. Jesus not only intends that his disciples should carry on his messianic mission of teaching and healing, he also intends that his disciples should carry on his mission of bearing suffering and persecution. The disciple’s quality of sheepishness is his share in the nonviolent nature of Our Lord’s work. We are not primarily fighters. We are not allowed to be haters. And we cannot use the language of revolutionary movements. Wasn’t it Stalin who asked the rhetorical question, “Where are the Pope’s divisions?” He was right. The Pope has no tanks, only a pope-mobile. Sheep are there to get pushed around. So we disciples are not to see ourselves as conquering crusaders. Of course disciples are to have an awareness of their own dignity, but not a worldly sense of their own importance. Our Lord’s cross is not an exception to the rule – of the life of the disciple. It is the rule. Outwardly, physical-political power will usually defeat disciples. Nevertheless, inwardly, missionary things are happening.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 13:07:50 +0000
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