Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, July 10, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B), Vigil
July 10, 2021

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as he sends out the apostles for the first time to proclaim his Gospel, instructions that are meant to guide the way that we share in that same continuous mission of the salvation of the world.
• Jesus’ love for us was so great that not only did he want to save us, but he wanted to involve us in our own salvation and in the salvation of our family and friends, even those we don’t know. From the beginning of time, he wanted us to be co-redeemers with him. It didn’t have to be this way. He could have stayed in our world until the end of time, physically, traversing every country himself. He did not have to ascend. But he wanted to ascend so that we could fulfill the mission he would give us, to bring the good news of salvation to the whole world. So from the beginning of his public ministry, not only did Jesus preach in word and deed, but he prepared us his disciples to do the same. He trained us to preach; he gave us his own authority to cure the sick and cast out unclean spirits. He formed us to be more and more like him, who himself was God the Father’s missionary. He did not merely state, “Do what I say,” but said “follow me.” And so Jesus told us to deny ourselves and pick up their Crosses, just as he did. He told us to pick up towels and serve others just as he girded himself and served us. And he told us to follow him in the mission he had received from the Father, the baton of which he would pass off to the tandem of them and the Holy Spirit. That baton was passed to the apostles and first disciples. They passed it on to others, who in turn handed it to others. That baton, that saving and salvific baton, he hands to us anew this Sunday.
• We can break down Jesus’ words to us this week into four simple parts:
  • To whom the Lord gives this mission;
  • What the message is we’re called to proclaim;
  • How he wants us to deliver that message; and
  • To whom he wants us to bring this message.
• The first part is whom Jesus commissions. I would hope that by this point, almost 60 years after the second Vatican Council, everyone already knows the answer. It’s not just to Bishops, priests, religious brothers or sisters, or missionaries. It’s to all of his disciples; it’s each one of us. By our baptism, we’re called to share in Christ’s own prophetic mission. This universal mission grew in stages. Jesus first trained the 12 and then sent them out (Mk 6:7-13). Then he trained 70 and sent them with the same instructions (Lk 10:1-12). Before he ascended into heaven, he instructed 500 on the mountainside and told them “Go out to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel, baptizing … and teaching them to carry out everything I have commanded you” (1 Cor 15:6; Mt 28:18-20). That mission continues down to this day and Jesus wants us — and in some sense needs us — to carry it on.
• The second question is: What are we called to preach? We’re not sent out with our own message. We’re not commissioned with the instruction to wing it. We’re sent out as ambassadors of Christ with Christ’s message, the same message he himself preached. St. Mark writes that as soon as Jesus returned from his forty day fast in the wilderness, he came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good news” (Mk 1:15). Jesus states a fact and gives an imperative. The Kingdom of God is at hand; therefore, change your lives and base them on this Gospel. When Jesus sends out the 12, as we see in Sunday’s Gospel, it’s with the same message: “They went out off,” St. Mark says, “and preached repentance.” Jesus gave the same message to all the disciples before his ascension: “Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Lk 24:47-48 ). The fundamental message of Jesus, which he passed on to his disciples in that great sending forth that continues right down to this Mass, is one of the need for conversion and the great news that God will help us. The central and fundamental message of Christ, as the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis used to write very succinctly, is two-fold: it involves first the truth about us, that we’re not the people we should be, that we’re sinners in need of conversion, not just once but continually; and then it involves the crux of the good news: salvation is possible through the forgiveness of sins. The very name of Jesus means “God saves.” Jesus sent his first disciples out with that message — that good news — of the call to turn away from sin and live in the kingdom of God. Likewise he sends each of us with that message, as sheep in the midst of wolves, in the context of a culture in great need of conversion in so many areas, as we all know. To be credible missionaries, though, we first have to enflesh this message. It’s no surprise that among his first missionaries, Jesus had chosen some great sinners — Peter, whose first words to the Lord were, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Lk 5:8 ); Matthew, a hated tax-collector who used to sin by shaking down his own people; and later Paul, who once terrorized, tortured and presided over the killing of Christians. They were able to preach that conversion from sins was possible and that God has indeed come to reconcile sinners. They were living testimonies of the salvation Christ sent them to preach to others. They went from sinners to saints. The Lord calls us preach this same message not only with our lips but with our life.
• That leads us directly to the third point: how Jesus wants us to deliver the message. He gives several specifics in the Gospel: “He began to send them out two by two… and instructed them to take nothing for their 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.” Jesus’ point was not to give the Church a particular dress code to last until the end of time, but to form his disciples so that their message would be credible. First, he wanted us to preach the Gospel just as he himself was accustomed to deliver it; Jesus lived by the very instructions he was giving to his disciples. Secondly, he wanted to cultivate in us the virtues of the Kingdom, so that we would be able to preach this message not just with words but with our whole bearing. We were to show that we take seriously what we are announcing, the presence of a God who tells us not to worry about what we are to eat, drink, wear or where we are to sleep, because God knows what we need before we ask for it and cares for us more than he cares for the lilies of the field and the birds of the sky. By telling us, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave,” he was instructing us to be grateful for the hospitality given, rather than looking for a better deal. By mentioning, “Whatever place does not welcome you, … leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them,” he was teaching us not to be weighed down with bad memories or nurse their wounds from one place to the next. If we experience rejection, and we occasionally will, he wants us to let it go, to have a fresh start and not to have the good news of great joy masked by the sadness of a previous bad experience. By sending us out two-by-two, he was also helping us to learn how to grow in love in their missionary journeys. Pope St. Gregory the Great 1400 years ago taught that the reason why Jesus sent the apostles and disciples out in pairs was so that they could learn how to love each other, to be patient with each other, to learn how to forgive each other each day. Most of the disciples Jesus sends out in pairs are married, and they have a mission by their simplicity of life, their dependence of God, their acceptance of his providential will, to give witness to their families, neighborhoods, and cities and towns that the Good News is real, and has filled them with joy. He wanted them to proclaim by their joy, the source of their joy; by their love for each other, the One who loved them first and commanded them to love like Him; by their poverty of spirit, that their treasure was in God, and so forth. Likewise the Lord wants each of us to incarnate the message we proclaim. If we hope to be credible ambassadors of Christ, we need to practice what we preach.
• That brings to the fourth and last question: To whom are we sent to proclaim the message? We’re sent to proclaim it to the whole world, but beginning with the one we look at in the mirror each day, and, then after we’ve heard the message and tried to put it into practice, to those with whom we come into regular contact. We’re called to proclaim the good news of repentance and the forgiveness of sins to our family, to friends, to colleagues at work, to fellow students, even, when the occasion arises, to religious, to priests, bishops and even the Holy Father. In some ways, this mission to go to the lost sheep we know is more challenging than going to dangerous missionary territories overseas because it requires profound conversion, because those closest to us can most readily see if our actions contradict the words we try to proclaim. They’ll know right off the bat if we’ve put into action in our own lives the message we’re announcing. We can’t get away with subtle arguments and beautiful words, but we have to love them into conversion, we have to radiate to them the salvation we’ve received from Christ and his zeal for souls. At the same time, however, those closet to us are the ones to whom, with God’s help, we might be the most effective instruments God can use to bring them the message of conversion and salvation. We know them. We know what buttons to push and not to push far better than any foreign missionary might. If they’re away from the practice of the faith, or have never practiced, then we will also have better access to them than any priest, nun, or missionary. In involving us in his mission, Jesus wants to give us the joy of seeing his salvation dawn in others, in becoming the greatest benefactors anyone will ever have, because we are the ones called by God to bring them the greatest treasure.
• The same Jesus who sent out the apostles in the Gospel comes to be with us in our Churches this Sunday. He comes so that we might enter into his kingdom and be strengthened to go forth to announce his kingdom, filling people with hope that God-with-us is still with us and the great hope that if we repent and believe, if we draw close to him in the Sacraments, then we will experience the fulfillment of the great promise of his kingdom that will know no end!

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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