Wednesday of Week 14 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 10:1-7

We begin today the second of the five discourses of Jesus which are a unique feature of Matthew’s Gospel. It consists of instructions to Jesus’ disciples on how they are to conduct their missionary work and the reactions they can expect in carrying it out.

It begins by the summoning of the inner circle of twelve disciples. Matthew presumes we already know about their formal selection, which he does not recount (the Gospels of Mark and Luke clearly distinguish the selection of the Apostles from their later missioning). These twelve disciples are now called Apostles.

The two words are distinct in meaning and we should not confuse them. A disciple (Latin discipulus, from discere, to learn) is a follower, someone who learns from a teacher and assimilates that teaching into his or her own life. An apostle (Greek, apostolos from apostello) is someone who is sent out on a mission, someone who is deputed to disseminate the teaching of the master to others. In the New Testament a distinction is made between the two. All the Gospels, for instance, speak of the Twelve Apostles and Luke mentions 72 disciples.

However, that does not mean the two roles are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, all of us who are called to be disciples are also expected to be apostles, actively sharing our faith with others. It is very easy for us to see ourselves, ‘ordinary’ Catholics, as disciples and to regard priests and religious as doing the apostolic work of the Church. That would be very wrong. Every one of us called to be a disciple is, by virtue of Baptism and Confirmation, also called to be an apostle.

Applied to the twelve men (yes, they were all men—and therein lies the source of many disputes!), the word ‘apostle’ does have a special sense. They would become, so to speak, the pillars or foundations on which the new Church would be built, with Peter as their leader. They would have the special role of handing on and interpreting the tradition they had received from Jesus, a role which in turn they handed on to those whom we now call the bishops, with the pope as leader and spokesperson.

Later on, Paul would be added to their number and Matthias would be chosen to replace the renegade Judas. In fact, it is interesting to see the mixed bunch of people that Jesus chose. We know next to nothing about most of them, but they were, for the most part, simple people—some of them definitely uneducated and perhaps even illiterate. Judas may well have been the most qualified among them. And yet we see the extraordinary results they produced, and the unstoppable movement they set in motion. The only explanation is that it was ultimately the work of God through the Holy Spirit.

The first instructions they are given are to confine their activities to their own people. They are not to go to pagans at this stage, or even to the Samaritans. As the heirs to the covenant and as God’s people, the Jews are to be the first to be invited to follow the Messiah and experience his saving power. And their proclamation is the same one that Jesus gave at the outset of his public preaching:

The Kingdom of Heaven [i.e. of God] has come near.

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Wednesday of Week 14 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Hosea 10:1-3,7-8,12

Israel under Jeroboam II (793-753) ‘never had it so good’. The Northern Kingdom is called Israel after the name of its ancestor and it is described as a “luxuriant vine”, which was a frequent metaphor for Israel.

But as we so often see happening in our own world, the good life does not result in moral living.—quite the opposite, in fact, is common. We have only to look around in our present time to see this. The prophet says:

The more his [i.e. Israel’s] fruit increased,
the more altars he built;
as his country improved,
he improved his pillars.

How true! The greater the prosperity, the higher the standard of living, the more idols are erected, things which people use all their energies in worshipping and pursuing.

But the people’s “heart is false”, their “hearts” are in the wrong place. Their heart is divided between worship of Yahweh and the Baals, or hesitating between Egypt and Assyria for their alliances. Israel formally calls on God, but it dishonours him through its worship of idols. But God:

…will break down their altars
and destroy their pillars.

The principles of truth, love and justice do not fit in the face of unlimited materialism, consumerism, hedonism, uninhibited sexual indulgence, fashion, status, success, power and all such worldly values.

In fact, in so far as worldly values are denials of truth and love and justice, they will ultimately collapse because of their inbuilt contradictions. These false ‘values’ are essentially opposed to people’s deepest aspirations—aspirations planted in our very being by our Creator.

Referring to the idol they have set up to worship, the prophet says:

For now they will say:
“We have no king,
for we do not fear the Lord,
and a king—what could he do for us?”

The prophet’s question is rhetorical and requires no answer.

Little do they realise, in the midst of their prosperity, that “Samaria’s king”, namely the calf-idol, is doomed to disappear “like a chip on the face of the waters”. Similarly, the “high places of Aven”, that is, the idolatrous shrine at Bethel, the “sin of Israel”, will meet with destruction and “thistle shall grow up on their altars”, i.e. weeds will cover them up.

They will be terrible days indeed when the people will call out for the hills to cover them and fall on them. Cries of utter despair quoted by Jesus when speaking to the women who sympathised with him as he carried his cross to Calvary (and referring to the coming destruction of Jerusalem):

Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ (Luke 23:28-30)

The last verse in our reading today from Hosea is also cited in Revelation (6:16) in the context of the cosmic upheaval accompanying the coming of the ‘Day of the Lord’.

But there is a way out, if the people change their ways and begin to plant justice—a justice where all share equitably in the resources available—and reap the fruits that come from deeply loving and compassionate hearts. It is time now to ‘plough new furrows’ in what has up to now been fallow and unproductive ground and go in search of God, becoming instead productive and fruitful. We remember what Jesus said would happen to the vine whose branches did not bear fruit.

It is for us to ask ourselves today to what extent we have been carried away by the affluence of our societies and the prevailing values (or lack thereof). Let us think about ‘ploughing a new field’ in our own lives and work to produce the fruit that matters, the fruit that lasts—fruit that not only we ourselves can enjoy, but which can be shared with others.

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