Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 18, 2023 — Year A
Readings: Ex 19:2-6a / Ps 100 / Rom 5:6-11 / Mt 9:36-10:8
by Rev. Nixon Negparanon, Pastor

Brothers and sisters, fatherhood is a God-given mission.   It is not just an obligation, neither is it just a human aspiration, nor just a personal passion.  It is a commitment to become a real shepherd and to become a worker disciple in the Lord’s vineyard.   The call on every father is to focus not so much on the worldly commission, but on the divine mission.   This is also the message in our readings today.

The gospel message from Matthew gives us the account of Jesus commissioning the twelve men whom He has chosen, giving them the charge to continue the work He has begun here on Earth.   Matthew tells us that these were the first people who were authorized to spread the good news to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.   Jesus charges the twelve to go out and cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons.  Just imagine yourself lucky enough to be selected by Jesus himself to be one of the twelve.   But then you are given the assignment to go and cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons.

Did Jesus really mean for them to actually do all these things?   How could these twelve men – fishermen, tradesmen, common folks including a tax collector and even the one who would betray Jesus – be capable of accepting these assignments?

Down through history, Jesus has chosen unlikely people to do seemingly impossible tasks.  We can pick up the book, The Lives of the Saints, and find numerous examples of ordinary people who responded to God’s call.   The Church, throughout its history, has had regular, ordinary people performing what might be considered impossible tasks, simply because they have responded to Christ and His teachings. People like Saint John Vianney, Saint Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc, Maximilian Kolbe, and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton are just a few examples of people who responded when they were called to spread the good news to others.

Jesus is now calling us.   We are just like the twelve whom He chooses.  We now have the responsibility to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons.   We accepted this call, this responsibility, at our baptism, but the question we immediately ask ourselves is how in the world do we cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and drive out demons?

Can we cure the sick?   Yes, we can help cure those who are sick.   We can help to provide for physical, psychological, or spiritual ailments.   We can be caregivers by assisting those in need.   It could be simple things like making an appointment with a physician or providing transportation to a physician’s office.   Perhaps it could involve something more complicated by administering care at your home or the home of the individual that is ill.  We might be required from time to time to provide simple one-on-one counseling to someone who is depressed, so that the person may find inner strength that he or she needs to make a decision enabling them to help themselves and to return to their daily activities.

How can we raise the dead? Taken literally, we know this is impossible, but sometimes people are dead in their faith.  We can provide spiritual assistance to those who are dead in their faith experience.   Perhaps it is someone who has fallen away from the faith because of a simple misunderstanding.  We can be instruments of hope to those who might think returning to God is hopeless.   Sometimes it is as simple as answering a question about the faith, providing information that will help heal the person of their spiritual illness.   Perhaps the person is dead spiritually because they were involved in a marriage that ended in a divorce.  We can provide information to help them understand their rights as a divorced person, and if they are in need of an annulment, we can provide resources for them to begin the annulment process.

Can we cleanse lepers?  The question we have to answer is who are the lepers in our lives?   It could be the individual at work that constantly is getting under our skin.  It could be the neighbor up the street who seemingly forever has knocked our children or has constantly criticized us because they don’t like our dog.  It could be a brother-in-law who has been on our case from the first day we met.   What can we do?  Sometimes the best way to handle people like this is to kill them with kindness.   We can simply smile or offer help to them with a project.  Perhaps we could send some greeting card or surprise them in some way that causes them to think or to ask why this person is being so kind to me.   We can present ourselves to these people as true followers of Christ, someone who is willing to clear the air, make amends, and try to begin a new relationship.

Can we drive out demons?   The answer is yes – sometimes those demons are in us and all about us. They are the things that prevent us from being the best person we can be. It could be those inner feelings that constantly cause us to see the negative side of life.  Perhaps we are constantly seeing the glass as half empty instead of always half full.  The demons could be feelings that can cause us to fall into various states of depression.  What can we do?   Obviously, we can seek professional counseling.  We can confide in family and friends.  However, because we are members of the Church, baptized into faith, we can many times rely on the gift of faith to help us through those difficult times.  Many times, prayer is a good way to rid ourselves of those demons.  Through prayer, we can seek the intercession of our patron saint, or call upon St. Joseph, or ask the Blessed Virgin to intercede for us with her Son to help us overcome times of negativism and the states of negative thought.

Discipleship is not so much doing but being.  Go down the list of the twelve apostles, and you’ll notice that nothing was said to describe what they did, except Matthew the tax collector and Judas who betrayed Him.   Perhaps that should lead to deeper appreciation of our personhood rather than of our so-called achievements, not so much of what we carry in our hands but what we carry in our hearts.

Christ is calling us to do his work now on Earth.   The beautiful thing that we have going for us as members of the Church on earth is our diversity.   We all have different talents and different abilities to accomplish the work our Lord has entrusted to us.  Jesus, whether we realize it or not, sends us out to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers. and drive out demons.