however simple and small our lives may seem, Jesus desires to work through us anyway

Homily for Luke 10: 1-12, 17-20 Independence Day

Today we continue our readings from St. Luke’s Gospel on discipleship. Last week, Jesus told us that the cost of being a disciple is high; we must give up everything to follow Him. Recall that Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead,” and “no one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.” The disciples of Jesus left everything to follow Him; they left their families, their jobs, their possessions and even their comfort zone to follow him.

Today, we heard that Jesus sent out his disciples on a mission. Jesus gives them great authority- to preach, to teach and to heal in His name. They are to go with nothing extra. We heard that they took no moneybag, no sack, and no extra sandals into a hostile world; they were like lambs amongst wolves. They are to depend on Jesus for everything. This may seem to be rather extreme for us; but as we heard in the Gospel, the results were amazing, and the disciples rejoice because they had seen the divine power of God working through them in their human weakness and emptiness.

You might be thinking, if this is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, I don’t think I want anything to do it. After all, we certainly cannot give up everything-our homes, our jobs, and all of our possessions to follow Jesus. And being sent without any supplies? Think of how we pack for a trip- of course we pack and prepare for every possible contingency. My friends always shake their heads when they see how much I pack on a trip. My one friend always says, “Father you packed the kitchen sink!” When we travel, we have to make sure we have extra money or least have all of our credit cards ready. So, how in the world can we possibly live this message of discipleship in our day?

To get over our fear, we first start by realizing that Jesus is indeed calling each us to be His disciples so that he can send us forth to preach the Good News. And then we begin to answer this call with a heartfelt desire to begin to live totally attached to Jesus, the pearl of great worth. In our hearts and with our whole being we have to desire to literally cling to Jesus . Then with his help received through prayer, we slowly detach ourselves from those things which interiorly, that is within our hearts, that we have place before him and so which separate us from Him.

It is not that we all must physically get rid of all that we possess, but that we must free our hearts from of all that we have placed before Jesus. We no longer live just to obtain things, but now we live to obtain the one thing we can't live without, the Creator of all things, Jesus and His Love. And then we abandoned ourselves into His loving arms.

Here we must mention something that our hearts cling to even more than things, and which prevents us from attaching ourselves more fully to Jesus, and this something is our sin. We must, in our hearts and in our lives detach ourselves from Sin-sin is that which makes us fearful to give ourselves totally to Jesus-sin makes us think only of the cost, only of what we must give up instead of what we gain for giving ourselves totally to Jesus.

In order to let go of our sin, we reach out for Jesus' divine help which is especially given to us through the Sacrament of penance. With this help we repent and convert our lives. This means we do the hard work of changing those actions in our lives which are not in accordance to God’s divine Will. We more and more conform ourselves to the teachings of His Holy Catholic Church, living them out in our daily lives.

The more detach ourselves from the things of this world especially sin, the more we allow ourselves to become attached to Jesus and to become intimate friends with Him, possessing Him fully in our hearts, then the more He wants to send us out into the world-“for we can’t hide our light under a bushel basket.” Jesus sends us out, like the 72, with our hearts united to His in order that we can, by our lives, give witness to this love we have for Jesus and the love He has for us and for all men. We become living testimonies to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and instruments of His healing love. And this is the healing saving love for which our modern world is starving.

It is easy for us to sometimes think we can't do anything or that we don't really have anything to offer. But however simple and small our lives may seem, Jesus desires to work through us anyway. He calls each of us and wants us to be even greater disciples than we already are. Jesus tells us, “do not be afraid” for along with this call, Jesus offers us the grace, that is the strength to witness to Him. We may not be in important or influential positions, but by our actions, however small, when done with love of Christ, we witness to Jesus. Again, as Blessed Mother Theresa said, discipleship is not doing great things, but little things done with great love for Jesus.)

Today we have discovered that before the Lord can really work in and through our lives, just like the disciples, we have to begin to rely evermore on God for everything. God worked through the disciples only because they trusted in Him and abandoned themselves into His arms (this was seen by the fact that they went out with no possessions. This takes great trust). We too must learn to abandon ourselves into the loving embrace of our Father more fully. We must believe and trust that Jesus desires to do great things with us. Jesus wants us to be great saints and to be used as His instruments to spread His healing and saving love to the world. Jesus wants us to be holy as the Lord God is holy, in order that the world can see Jesus in us and in us, He can love the world through us.

Let us turn to Our Lady for help. Holy Mother of God, true and faithful mother of all the disciple of Christ, Pray for us; help us leave behind whatever our hearts are set on before Jesus and cling to Him alone. Help us at this Holy Mass to abandon ourselves into the Arms our Heavenly Father by sacrificing all we have and are on this altar of sacrifice so that we may receive more fully the Pearl of Great price, Jesus your Son in the Holy Eucharist. God Bless you and Happy Fourth of July!