Category: The Last Word

The poor – but every person is poor – can live only if they are accepted. The apostle needs acceptance because he has made himself poor out of love. Love implies the need to be loved: in the same way that it gives everything, it also receives everything from the others, even its very self. The apostle, wherever he may enter, doesn’t impose culture, habits or ideas. He is free in order to witness, on behalf of everybody, to what is necessary: to be welcomed and to welcome. His lifestyle is so beautiful and humane – the only one that is beautiful and humane! – that it is divine. He doesn’t crave for wealth, power and prestige. He only carries Jesus’ Good News: God is Father, not master. And we are called to be what we are: children and brethren. This is the only life that can be viable and makes of every limitation, even an extreme one, a place of compassion and communion. The poverty of the cross, God’s foolishness and weakness, is love’s wisdom and strength: it freely “compels” the other to accept – as we do with a child whose life is entrusted to the adult who meets him. The one who is sent, like the Son of Man, puts himself into the hands of people: he has the cunning of the God of love who makes Himself small in order to be welcomed. If I introduce myself by means of wealth and violence, I “provoke” (i.e. call-out) a craving for wealth and violence in others. They will admire and hate me. If they can, they will destroy me. If not, they will take me for their model, in order to become like me: free to colonize as I am colonized. If I am poor, I will “provoke” in others acceptance. The apostle does not perform good deeds like the various NGOs (that, in some extreme cases, can also create false expectations and spoil the people’s dignity). He only carries the poverty of his love. Those who welcome him are already “evangelized”: they have become God’s children because they have welcomed the apostle as a brother. “Whatever house” – For us people, the house is not like an animal den: it is a place of relationships, love or selfishness, joy or unhappiness, life or death.  “You enter” – The messenger is a poor person. He enters at the other’s not in order to impose himself, but because he loves him as a brother. Love is a guest: it lives where it is welcomed. In our life, we are all guests: we live because we are loved by others. Hospitality is always mutual: to accept is to surrender ourselves; our surrender is when we accept and welcome others. “First say” – In relationships, the primacy belongs to the words by which I communicate myself to the others. “Peace” – The messenger proclaims what his host has already done: he has obtained peace, he has entered the Kingdom. In

It is the title of Luke’s last discourse about mission. The evangelist, Saint Paul’s fellow worker, has assimilated Paul’s spirit. In fact, he relates three of Jesus’ apostolic speeches: one explains Jesus’ ministry (4:14-30); the other the apostles’ (9:1-6) and the third that of the seventy-two disciples (10:1ff). The three speeches throw light on each other: from the Son’s mission on behalf of the brethren, the mission of the twelve, as well as that from all the others originate. Moreover, Luke follows the Gospel with the Acts of the Apostles: what Jesus “started saying and doing” (Acts 1:1) is what, after Him, the apostles keep doing and saying in every time and place. This year we will read Luke 10:1-24 as if with a magnifying glass: it is an inexhaustible mine. We will put in evidence the richness of the text by commenting every expression of it. The above title tells us the meaning of mission: it brings salvation to all peoples. Salvation is the Son’s countenance who reveals to us, humans, our hidden identity. The One who is always “coming,” does come by means of the disciple’s witness who has His same countenance. “After this” – The Mission comes, after what was said in the previous text (Luke 9:57-62). In it, Jesus speaks of the three gifts that make His disciple similar to Him: freedom from property of things, people and himself, as fruit of a love that overcomes every egoism and slavery. In order to give witness to Him, it is necessary first to have the Son’s Spirit. “The Lord appointed seventy two other disciples” – The Lord, then, in the manner He had called the twelve, singles out, through the community, the other “witnesses of His Resurrection” (Acts 1:22). According to the ancient point of view, 72 are the peoples of the earth: the Mission is towards all. Whoever excludes even one, is excluding the Son who made Himself the last of all. Every disciple is apostle and every apostle is disciple. Disciple is everyone who “learns” from the Son, who is such because of being “sent” (=apostle) to the brethren. These 72 are “others,” but not different from the first twelve. One is the mission of all: that of the Son who knows the Father’s love. “He sent them” – As the Father sends the Son, in the same way the Son sends whoever is like Himself. It is love that makes him an “apostle”: it “sends” him outside himself, towards the brethren, in order to fulfill his own identity as son. “Two by two” – Jesus sends them “two by two” not only for mutual help: we must be at least two in order to witness love. “Two” is seed of community and victory over the sin of loneliness. No apostle may be alone. Only fraternity witnesses to the common Father. The communion among brethren is the fulfillment of the Gospel and its only credible testimony. “Ahead of Him” – The apostles are messengers sent

The harvest is ripe wheat. It is necessary and urgent to harvest it in time so that it may become bread. You cannot harvest it ahead of time or behind time. In the first case, it is unripe and useless; afterwards, it rots and you have to throw it. Like the harvest, every person is always ready to live as God’s child and in mutual fraternity. Otherwise, he/she is dead and spreads death. It is necessary to announce the Gospel to every person. People live according to what they think they are. If they don’t know that they are God’s children and brothers or sisters to each other, they will not act as such. This is hard even for those who are aware of it! And it is urgent that all persons may know who they are, in order to live their personal truth at once, from now on. Every moment lived outside the truth is wasted; it is darkness and a lie. “And He said to them” – Jesus keeps saying what He said in the first place. His voice still resounds in the Word: in every word the speaker is present. What He said to the 72 disciples, He is now saying to me and to all. The Gospel reading in the liturgy starts always with the expression: “In that time.” Listening to the Word, I re-live now the time gone by. The story becomes alive for me here and now: what is narrated happens also in me and I say with Mary: “Let it be to me according to Your word.” “The harvest is plentiful” – The harvest: all human beings of every time and culture – past, present and future – are God’s children, called to live as brothers and sisters. They are ripe wheat, ready to receive the gift of the Gospel. It is never too early for the Gospel announcement; but it is soon too late. Every instant that people pass outside the love of the Father and the brethren is wasted life. Jesus’ very first words in Mark’s Gospel are: “The time is fulfilled.” Thus, the present is pregnant with eternity. Then, Jesus adds: “The Kingdom of God is at hand” i.e. it is here present in the One who is speaking to me. I have only to “convert and believe,” following Him and His word (Mark 1:15). In His speech at Nazareth, after having read the promises according to Isaiah, Jesus said: “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Today, not yesterday or tomorrow! Aware of the urgency of the present, Paul says: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).  The announcement, by itself, doesn’t postulate the inculturation of the Gospel. The Word is seed. Once thrown to the ground, it catches and grows “automatically” (Mark 4:28): it knows what to do by adapting to the terrain, ambience and time. It is evangelization that must inculturate itself to the Gospel, in order

The end of mission is the missionary’s joy: he becomes God’s child. But it is also the Son’s joy, who dances at the Father’s tune, because children are born to Him. It is the most beautiful joy: that of the Father/Mother because of the children who are born, and that of the Son because of the brethren who came to life. We are at the peak of the Gospel: a meteorite fallen from John the Evangelist’s sky, a wandering rock come down from a very high mountain. We are God’s joy, Father, Son and Holy Spirit! Jesus tells His disciples that to see this explosion of joy is the supreme beatitude, the fulfillment of every promise (Luke 10:23ff). The ultimate mission completion is for us to share the Trinity’s dance. What God is by nature, we are by grace: we have His Spirit, His life, His love. We are called and really are His children, even if our condition is not yet fully manifested (1 John 3:1ff). It is, however, revealed to us in this sublime scene. It is like a snapshot not so much of what God does for us, but especially of how He feels about us. It is beyond every possible desire we may have: we are precious in His eyes and worthy of esteem, because He loves us (Isaiah 43:4). The Father loves us of a unique, total love as He loves the Son; and the latter loves us with the very same Father’s love. God loves us more than He loves Himself: on our behalf, He has given up His own life in the Son (Cf. John 17:23; 15:9.13; 3:16). God is in love with His creatures (Saint Catherine); He loves us with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).  “It was then that (Jesus) danced in the Holy Spirit” – Jesus jumps and dances with uncontainable happiness. It is the time when the Seventy-Two come back from their mission; it is like an anticipation of the mission completion, when every person will recognize his/her dignity as God’s child and brother/sister of all. Our history points to that hour, to the exultation of the Father and the Son in the Spirit. From this everlasting dance, issues the salvation time: Jesus’ time, God’s everlasting “today” that makes itself present to every human being by means of announcement and reception. “I bless You, Father” – The Son’s exultation exalts the Father. Jesus witnesses to God’s paternity: He is the Son who, on behalf of the brethren, reveals the God who nobody has ever known. “For hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children” – Infants are wordless, they only know saying: “Abba, Father.” This original love experience is the foundation of every existence: without it, every wisdom and prudence of grown up people generates nothing but unhappiness and fear. “Yes, Father, for this is what it pleased You to do” – The Son’s joy is a “yes” to the Father’s joy who,

The word “Mission” is related to “Mass,” and these words refer to the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the life of the children who love the Father and the brethren, therefore, it is the beginning and end of mission. It is the beginning because whoever loves the Father is sent to the brethren who still do not know Him. It is the end because mission wants to bring all the children to the same table in the joy of the Father. Human beings are made for joy, the fruit of returned love. The Eucharist is the sharing of a meal as children and brothers and sisters. The food maintains our physical life; the “way” we share food can give us our spiritual life.  If dogs feed from their bowls, showing their teeth at each other, human beings eat at table, “facing” each other. In our table of fellowship, we nourish one another on the love given and received. The common meal is sacrament of mutual love, God’s life and our life as His children. The Eucharist is not mere ritual. Our spiritual worship is very… down-to-earth: it is to live out our love for our brethren in concrete (Romans 12:1ff). For this reason, Paul tells those of Corinth that their gathering is not “eating the supper of the Lord”: they “eat and drink their condemnation,” because they act the opposite of what they celebrate.  They do not know how to “discern the Lord’s body” in their brothers who are poor. These actually, when they arrive at the Eucharist after having served their masters, don’t find food anymore because the rich have already grabbed and devoured everything (1 Corinthians 11:17-33). We are called to do like Jesus does who “takes” everything, even His own life, “giving thanks” to the Father. The Son lives His life and everything else as a sign of His love that gives everything; because of this, knowing that He is loved, He knows how to love: “He breaks and gives” to the brethren. He is the same as the Father because He not only receives but gives.  This is a blessed life that takes and gives, making a Eucharist of everything: joy, grace, beauty, goodness and love. It is the only possible way in this world; it is the most beautiful to think of. Instead, the existence of those who “take and eat” everything and everybody, without ever giving, bloats with curse and death. “In the same house” – It is the house of the host who has become son because he welcomes the messenger like a brother. This house is open to the other and, therefore, to the Other, God: it is fragrant with life: it is the Church, the shelter of those who accept and are accepted. It is not built with cement or bricks that are all the same; it is made of “living stones,” persons all different from each other, who must adapt one to the other in order to form the temple which

Prayer gives us a new heart: the Son’s who loves like the Father. The Father loves each one of us with the same unique and total love by which He loves the Son. Of us, Jesus tells the Father: “You have loved them even as You have loved Me” (John 17:23). Whoever ignores that he is loved, does bad to himself and others. Evil, the only problem of humanity, is not eliminated by repaying it with the same currency: that would double its capital! We overcome it with a love that is stronger than death itself. This is what Jesus did and what He tells us to do: to overcome evil with good (Romans12:21). To be like lambs amongst wolves is the color of Jesus’ mission and of our mission as well. Urged by the same love (2 Corinthians 5:14), in our flesh we complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of our brethren (Colossians 1:24). The lamb is related to the gospel ass that, carrying the others’ burdens, fulfills the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). Thus it overcomes the violence of the powerful (Zechariah 9:9). Jesus entrusts to His disciples His own mission: to untie the ass, symbol of humility and service, in order to be like lambs. Our capacity of serving is the way we resemble God: it makes us share the Lamb’s victory (Revelation 6:12). To serve means to love. Love, complete fulfillment of the whole law (Romans 13:10), makes us perfect like the Father (Matthew 5:48), whose essence is to be merciful like a mother (Luke 6:36). Truly, God is love (1 John 4:8). In the love that forgives all, even evil turns into goodness. This is what Joseph tells his brothers who had sold him into slavery: “As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). “Go your way!” – After having ordered prayer that transforms ourselves into Him, Jesus sends us to the brethren: “As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you” so does the Risen Christ say to us, showing His wounds as the slaughtered Lamb and yet victorious, everlasting source of joy (John 20:20ff). “Behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.” – Jesus sends us out as He Himself was sent out, the Lamb, already predestined for our salvation before the world started (1 Peter 1:18-20). He is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), the Immolated and Risen Lamb who overcomes evil and death itself (Revelation 5:12ff). He is the only One, by His death and resurrection, who can open the seven seals and read the book of history, explaining its puzzles (Revelation 5:1-6). We are sent “in the midst of wolves,” like the Son. He is the Shepherd because He is the Lamb that exposes, disposes and deposes His life for the