In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus’ message may strike us as difficult to understand. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus’ message is one of peace and Christian brotherhood, of reconciliation with our fellow human beings and with God, whom we are asked to call Father. Today Jesus speaks of variance and contradiction. Jesus tells us that he has not come to bring peace, but a sword [ … ]

No matter how great the world’s lies may be, we are assured by Jesus, truth will triumph. For this reason, these verses of the Gospel of Matthew teach us, we need not be afraid, though the going can get very rough indeed, and our Christian faith will be tested, our love always coerced to turn into the opposite of love, and so we need always the more love to counter this threat [ … ]

‘I speak the name of Jesus.’ As the Discourse of the Mission continues, Jesus prepares his disciples to face danger. They are to be as sheep. In this way again they are to imitate Jesus – to act in persona of Jesus – as they preach and heal, as they prefigure the saving sacrifice upon the cross. There is to be contention, contradiction [ … ]

The Discourse of the Mission continues as Jesus mandates his disciples to preach the good news that the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. This is a wonderful, new message. For other Jews, the Kingdom to come remained far in the future. It would come after they had done their own part. The Pharisees believed that the Kingdom would come once the Law were perfectly observed, the Essenes when the country would have purified itself. For Jesus, the time is already fulfilled. Independently of any good works the people could do, the Kingdom of God is here already, as a completely gratuitous gift of God. What is now required is to teach the people to perceive this fact. This will mean to look at the world in a new way [ … ]

Jesus’ great Discourse of the Mission begins in these Gospel verses with the calling together of the twelve disciples and the summative naming of the twelve. These twelve apostles are mandated; they are sent to establish the first foundations of Christ’s Church, and they are empowered by Jesus to exorcise unclean spirits and to heal the sick, to perform the very miracles of Jesus as a sign that the Kingdom of God has come. Through exorcism, the apostles are called to an imitation of Christ, and so in this way to establish the Christian community [ … ]