July 6, 2025
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 102
Reading 1
Thus says the LORD:
Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her,
all you who love her;
exult, exult with her,
all you who were mourning over her!
Oh, that you may suck fully
of the milk of her comfort,
that you may nurse with delight
at her abundant breasts!
For thus says the LORD:
Lo, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river,
and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent.
As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms,
and fondled in her lap;
as a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.
When you see this, your heart shall rejoice
and your bodies flourish like the grass;
the LORD's power shall be known to his servants.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
66:1-3, 4-5, 6-7, 16, 20
R. (1) Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
Shout joyfully to God, all the earth,
sing praise to the glory of his name;
proclaim his glorious praise.
Say to God, "How tremendous are your deeds!"
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
"Let all on earth worship and sing praise to you,
sing praise to your name!"
Come and see the works of God,
his tremendous deeds among the children of Adam.
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
He has changed the sea into dry land;
through the river they passed on foot;
therefore let us rejoice in him.
He rules by his might forever.
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
Hear now, all you who fear God, while I declare
what he has done for me.
Blessed be God who refused me not
my prayer or his kindness!
R. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.
Reading 2
Brothers and sisters:
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world has been crucified to me,
and I to the world.
For neither does circumcision mean anything, nor does uncircumcision,
but only a new creation.
Peace and mercy be to all who follow this rule
and to the Israel of God.
From now on, let no one make troubles for me;
for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit,
brothers and sisters. Amen.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Let the peace of Christ control your hearts;
let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
At that time the Lord appointed seventy-two others
whom he sent ahead of him in pairs
to every town and place he intended to visit.
He said to them,
"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
Go on your way;
behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals;
and greet no one along the way.
Into whatever house you enter, first say,
'Peace to this household.'
If a peaceful person lives there,
your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you.
Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you,
for the laborer deserves his payment.
Do not move about from one house to another.
Whatever town you enter and they welcome you,
eat what is set before you,
cure the sick in it and say to them,
'The kingdom of God is at hand for you.'
Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you,
go out into the streets and say,
'The dust of your town that clings to our feet,
even that we shake off against you.'
Yet know this: the kingdom of God is at hand.
I tell you,
it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town."
The seventy-two returned rejoicing, and said,
"Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name."
Jesus said, "I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.
Behold, I have given you the power to 'tread upon serpents' and scorpions
and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you.
Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you,
but rejoice because your names are written in heaven."
or
At that time the Lord appointed seventy-two others
whom he sent ahead of him in pairs
to every town and place he intended to visit.
He said to them,
"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
Go on your way;
behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals;
and greet no one along the way.
Into whatever house you enter, first say,
'Peace to this household.'
If a peaceful person lives there,
your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you.
Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you,
for the laborer deserves his payment.
Do not move about from one house to another.
Whatever town you enter and they welcome you,
eat what is set before you,
cure the sick in it and say to them,
'The kingdom of God is at hand for you.'"
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070625.cfm
Commentary on Isaiah
66:10-14; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12,17-20
It is always an experience for people who are committed
Christians to be living among people for whom God in practice hardly exists;
people who seem to have little direction and meaning in their lives beyond
having a job, getting money and indulging in some level of enjoyment. For such
Christians the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage have much meaning:
The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few…
Certainly those words must have seemed so true for the early
Christians as they lived in relatively tiny communities in a sea of paganism
and religions steeped in superstition and fatalism. At the time, the Church was
truly like the tiny mustard seed or the small measure of yeast swallowed up in
a large batch of dough.
Today, there are over two billion Christians in the world,
representing just under a third of the world’s total population. Those early
labourers clearly did not work in vain. The mustard seed grew into a large tree
and has provided shelter for billions (a number that was beyond comprehension
at the beginning of the Church). The invisible yeast worked its influence on
the seemingly inert dough.
How many labourers?
Yet, put another way, two out of three people have not yet
accepted the Way of Jesus. Of course, a large proportion of these are committed
to other faiths and many of them are deeply religious. But there is still a
large proportion which is agnostic or are practical atheists—they live their
lives as if God did not exist.
Among so many who do call themselves Christians, how many
could be deemed active labours in God’s vineyard? For the harvest is still
great. Quite often, by ‘labourers’ we think of priests, or religious brothers
and sisters, those who have a ‘vocation’. One hears people expressing regret
that today there are so few ‘vocations’. What will the Church do? How will it
carry on?
However, it is doubtful that Jesus was thinking of priests
and religious when he spoke the words above. In fact, in the world of the New
Testament there were no priests or religious as we understand those terms
today. In the mind of Jesus—and in the mind of the early evangelists—everyone
who was known as a follower of Christ was expected to be a labourer in the
harvest field. (Paul, for instance, was an Apostle, a great preacher and
evangeliser, but he was not a bishop or a priest, terms which had not yet taken
shape. He was a layman and made his living as a tent-maker.)
What are we to do?
What kind of work are we expected to do? Where can we find the time above and
beyond earning our daily living and being with our families? Are we to try and
convert every single person in our society to the Christian faith? Certainly,
if we find that no one wants to share our faith-vision and the life that
follows from it, then there is something seriously wrong with the way we are
seen to live our Christian lives.
On the other hand, it would be quite unrealistic to expect
that every single person will find faith in Jesus. Experience over more than
2,000 years tells us that this does not happen. And, while we may experience
that our Christian faith provides a precious dimension of meaning which is
everything to us, we cannot exclude the possibility that God can and does call
others to himself in his own way.
What really matters?
In the Second Reading, Paul, speaking to the Galatians, says that it does not
matter if a person is circumcised or not. Paul says:
For neither does circumcision mean anything, nor does
uncircumcision, but only a new creation.
Could we say today that going through the ritual of being
baptised may not be the most important thing either? Unless I am on the way to
becoming a genuinely transformed person—a “new creation” in the image of
Jesus—then my baptism and all my other religious experiences have very little
value.
Christianity is not an end in itself. It is simply a very
effective, and, we believe, the most effective way, of becoming that altogether
new kind of human person that Jesus and Paul speak about. This new person has a
deep sense of both God’s utter transcendence and utter immanence, the God who
constantly calls us beyond where we are and who, at the same time, deeply
penetrates our being and our every experience. This new person strives to live
a life of perfect integrity and truth, a life of deep compassion and concern.
This new person lives in freedom and peace.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus recommends his disciples not to
weigh themselves down with all kinds of bag and baggage. Their security is not
in material possessions, in what they have—e.g. money, property, investments or
credit cards. It is not in their status and standing in the eyes of others. It
is not in the power and influence that they can wield. Their security comes
from deep within, a security that no one or no circumstance can take away from
them.
Peace and prosperity
Two important words that are mentioned in today’s readings are “peace” and
“prosperity”. Isaiah, in the First Reading says:
For thus says the Lord:
I will spread prosperity over her like a river,
like an overflowing torrent,
the wealth of nations.
Paul speaks of the peace and mercy that come to all who
become a transformed person in Jesus Christ:
Peace and mercy be to all who follow this rule and to the
Israel of God.
And, in the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples:
Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this
household.’
This peace is not dependent on outside circumstances. It can
exist even when we are surrounded by storms. It is the peace Jesus experienced
after his prayer in the garden. It is the peace that Paul experiences:
…in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the
world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
So our task as Christians is to be bringers of peace. Of
course, we need that peace and inner security within ourselves first of all. It
is a peace that a close following of Jesus can bring. It is a peace that our
conventional society, wracked as it is with so many externally-caused stresses
and fears and ambitions, seldom seems to know.
We are called today to become labourers with Jesus in the
harvest that is the society in which we live. It is a society that seems so
rich and prosperous, and yet is so impoverished of the security and peace it so
frenetically seeks to find. We are called today to labour, so that our society
may be gradually transformed into a place where the values of the Gospel, often
so little understood even by ourselves, will prevail.
Bringing Jesus
Today’s Gospel says that Jesus sent out his seventy-two disciples:
…to every town and place he intended to visit.
That is an interesting remark. Who comes first to any place?
Is it Jesus or me? As a person baptised in Jesus’ name, I am a part of his
Body. Where the body is, there, too, is the person. Where I go then, Jesus also
comes to visit. Jesus does not go before us. Nor does he come after us. We come
together!
But if I do not go or if I do not reach out, then to some
extent Jesus does not go and Jesus does not reach out. I am part of his Body; I
am the visible indication of his presence. My voice is his voice. He told his
disciples:
Whoever listens to you listens to me…
If I do not speak his message, who will be able to listen to
it?
The disciples came back from their mission rejoicing and
excited. They discovered they could do the same things that Jesus was doing—and
so can we. And unless we try, we are not worthy of our baptism, which becomes
an empty ritual, like circumcision.
Where to start?
But where do I start? I cannot single-handedly convert the whole of my society!
We can, however, follow the example of someone like St Teresa of Calcutta
(Mother Teresa). She realised that there were thousands and thousands of the
poor, destitute and dying who needed her immediate help. But she started with
just one at a time.
It reminds us of the story about the man who was seen
picking up beached starfish from the strand and throwing them back into the
sea. Someone who was watching said:
“You’re wasting your time. There are thousands of them;
throwing back a handful will make no difference.”
And the man replied:
“It will make a difference to each one thrown back.”
Today, I too can start with just one person.
To be a labourer in the harvest is for the happiness of
others to be as important as your own. It is to experience inner peace and to
be a bringer of peace to others. How life would be changed if we all tried to
do that! What a difference it would make!
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Sunday,
July 6, 2025
14th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Lord our God, you are a
generous Father, who give us what is good for us simply because you love us.
Give us grateful hearts,
Lord, that we may learn from you to give and share without calculation but
simply with love and joy, as Jesus did among us, your Son, who lives with you
and with us forever.
Gospel Reading - Luke 10: 1-9
After this the Lord appointed
seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs, to all the towns
and places he himself would be visiting. And he said to them, 'The harvest is
rich but the laborers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers
to do his harvesting. Start off now, but look, I am sending you out like lambs
among wolves. Take no purse with you, no haversack, no sandals. Salute no one
on the road. Whatever house you enter, let your first words be, "Peace to
this house!" And if a man of peace lives there, your peace will go and
rest on him; if not, it will come back to you. Stay in the same house, taking
what food and drink they have to offer, for the laborer deserves his wages; do
not move from house to house. Whenever you go into a town where they make you
welcome, eat what is put before you. Cure those in it who are sick, and say,
"The kingdom of God is very near to you."
Reflection
During the time of Jesus
there were several movements which, like Jesus, sought a new way of living. For
example, John the Baptist, the Pharisees and others. Many of them formed a
community and had disciples. (Jn 1: 35; Lk 11: 1; Acts 19: 3) and they had
their own missionaries (Mt 23: 25). But there was a great difference! The
Pharisees, for example, when they went on mission, they went already prepared.
They thought that they could not eat what the people would offer them, because
the food was not always ritually “pure.” For this reason, they took with them
purses and money in order to be able to take care of their own food. Thus,
instead of working toward overcoming the divisions, this observances of the Law
of purity weakened even more the living out of community values.
The proposal of Jesus is
different. He tries to rescue the community values which had been suffocated
and tries to renew and to reorganize the communities in such a way that they
could, once again, be an expression of the Covenant, a sign of the Kingdom of
God. And this is what is said to us in today’s Gospel which describes the
sending out of the 72 disciples:
•
Luke 10, 1: The Mission. Jesus sends the disciples to
places where he himself has to go. The disciple is the spokesperson of Jesus.
He is not the owner of the Good News. Jesus sends the disciples in pairs, two
by two. That is useful for mutual help, because the mission is not individual,
but rather communitarian. Two persons represent the community better than only
one.
•
Luke 10: 2-3: Co-responsibility. The first task is
that of praying so that God may send workers. Every disciple - man and woman –
has to feel responsible for the mission. And thus has to pray to the Father to
send workers to continue the mission. Jesus sends his disciples as sheep among
wolves. The mission is a difficult and dangerous task. Because the system in
which they lived was and continues to be contrary to the reorganization of the
people in a community of life. The Mission to which Jesus sends the 72
disciples tries to recover four community values:
•
Luke 10: 4-6: Hospitality. Contrary to the other
missionaries, the disciples of Jesus – men and women – cannot take anything
with them, neither purse, nor sandals. They can and should only take peace.
That means that they have to trust in the hospitality of the people. Because
the disciple who goes without anything, taking only peace, shows that he/she
trusts the people. The disciple thinks that he/she will be received, and the
people feel respected and confirmed. Through this practice the disciple
criticizes the laws of exclusion and recovers the ancient value of hospitality.
Greet no one on the road, probably means, that no time should be lost in things
which do not belong to the mission.
•
Luke 10: 7: Sharing. The disciples should not go from
house to house, but should remain in the same house. That is, they should live together
with the people in a stable way, participate in their life and in the work of
the people of the place and live from what they receive in exchange, because
the laborer deserves his wages. This means that they have to trust in sharing.
Thus, through this new practice, they recover an ancient tradition of the
people, they criticize the culture of accumulation which distinguished the
politics of the Roman Empire and announced a new model of living together.
•
Luke 10: 8: Communion around the same table. The
disciples should eat what the people offer them. They cannot live separated,
eating their own food. That means that they should accept the communion and
cannot be separated, eating their own food. This means that they have to accept
to sit around the table with the others. In this contact with the others, they
should not fear to loose the legal purity. Acting in this way, they criticize
the laws of purity which were in force and they announce a new access to
purity, to the intimacy with God…
•
Luke 10: 9a: The Acceptance of the excluded. The
disciples should cure those who are sick, cure the lepers and cast out the
devils (Mt 10: 8). This means that in the community they should accept those
who are excluded. This practice of solidarity criticizes society which excludes
and indicates concrete solutions.
•
Luke 10: 9b: The coming of the Kingdom. If all these
requirements are respected, the disciples can and should cry out in the four
directions: The Kingdom is here! Because the Kingdom is a new way of living and
of living together with others, according to the Good News which Jesus has come
to reveal to us: God is Father and because of this we are all brothers and
sisters. In the first place, to educate for the Kingdom is to teach a new way
of living and of living together with others, a new way of acting and of
thinking.
Personal questions
•
Why are all these different attitudes recommended by
Jesus signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God?
•
How can we practice today what Jesus asks: “do not
take with you any purse,” do not move from house to house,” “do not greet
anyone on the road,” announce the Kingdom?
Concluding Prayer
The Law of
Yahweh is perfect, refreshment to the soul; the decree of Yahweh is
trustworthy, wisdom for the simple. (Ps 19: 7)
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