Take nothing for the journey…
Our Readings for this weekend speak about being sent on a special mission: Amos, Jesus and the Twelve, St. Paul. All of them were chosen and given a prophetic mission. We may not think of ourselves as we do them: extraordinary people who did extraordinary deeds. Yet, Amos, for example, saw himself just like every ordinary person around him. He was a “a shepherd and a dresser of vines,” sent on a mission to communicate God’s desires to a people living in a world that had lost its way.
We might think that those whom Jesus sends out would need more than sandals and a walking stick—but Jesus gifts them with what he wants them to have. They went, and later they will come back to tell Jesus all that had been accomplished by his gifts.
A prophet is someone sent to tell the truth with love—the truth about God and about us. Each of us has the power to do what a prophet is called to do, perhaps not with words but with the example of our lives—lives graced lives like those of Amos, the twelve, and those “saints” in our lives who inspire us. We can draw encouragement and strength from thinking of those people in our lives as whom we see as “holy.” Indeed, we are surrounded by a “cloud of witnesses” who help us to embrace the fact that we are chosen, sent, and blessed on our way. And, like the twelve, we are sent on our journey with what we have with us right now.
We are given our mission, as St. Paul says, so that we might exist for the praise of God’s glory. His prayer can be our prayer: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing as he chose us in him.”
Len Kraus, S.J.
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