💖 HOMILY - JULY 10 💖

First Reading - Hosea 10:1-3,7-8,12 

Gospel - Matthew 10:1-7

Today’s Gospel passage gives a short account of the call and mission of the apostles. The first missionary was sent to this world when God the Father dispatched His only-begotten Son, Incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth, into this world with the “Good News” that God is a loving, merciful, and forgiving Father Who wants to save everyone through His Son Jesus. Today’s Gospel describes how this first missionary selected and empowered twelve future missionaries as apostles, sending them to the Jewish towns and villages as heralds to announce the Good News that God was keeping His promises now.

Jesus selected very ordinary people, most of them hard-working fishermen with no social status, learning, or political influence, because he was sure that they would be very effective instruments in God’s hands. It was a strange mix of people: Matthew was a hated tax collector for a foreign power, while Simon the Cananaean was a Zealot — a fanatical nationalist determined to destroy Roman rule by any means; the others were mostly professional fishermen with a lot of good will, patience and stamina. It was only their admiration and love for Jesus that united them. Jesus selected them after a night of prayer and gave them a share in his Divine powers of healing and exorcism with the mission to announce the coming of the “kingdom of God” in an immediate visit to them by “the One Who is to come”

Dear friends, as Christians, we have the same mission that Jesus entrusted to the apostles. We fulfill this mission by proclaiming the word of God, primarily by our living out of Jesus’ teachings, and by promoting and helping world-wide missionary activities of the Church with prayer, moral support, and financial aid.