The Seventy-two

Thursday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Dn 3: 31, 29, 30, 43, 42 All that you have done to us, O Lord, you have done with true judgment, for we have sinned against you and not obeyed your commandments. But give glory to your name and deal with us according to the bounty of your mercy.

Collect O God, who manifest your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow, we pray, your grace abundantly upon us and make those hastening to attain your promises heirs to the treasures of heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Job 19:21-27; Psalm 26; Luke 10:1-12

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, 'Peace to this house.' If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, 'The kingdom of God is near you.' But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.' I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. (Luke 10:1-12)

The Seventy-two The most obvious point we are led to think of in our Gospel passage today is the spread of the Christian faith. Faith in Jesus Christ began to spread as soon as Jesus Christ made his public appearance. The first to “have faith in Jesus Christ” was John the Baptist. He was made aware that here was the promised One. He distinctly says that he had not known this, but was made aware of it by the One who sent him to baptize (John 1:33). Because of his testimony, Christ gained his first disciples (John 1: 36-39). They were among his very best, and these led to others (1: 40-51). Thus the faith began to spread, but let us notice that there was what we might call a divinely intended channel of this initial evangelization. By that I mean that John was a formally constituted prophet of God, and he announced that Jesus was the Messiah. Christ’s first disciples were gained because of a prophetic testimony. It was not just a movement of faith that spontaneously arose and happened to have fortunate results. In our Gospel today we see that Christ did not simply leave the growth of faith in him — on which he put so much store — to the chance development of a movement of interest in him. He selected and appointed a specific number of his disciples to go ahead of him in pairs, “to every town and place where he was about to go.” This appointment was a purely temporary structure serving as the engine of the spread of the faith, but it reminds us of a pattern. A permanent system for the spread of the faith would soon come. From among his disciples Christ appointed twelve who would be with him and who would share in his ministry. Among them, he appointed one, Simon, who would be the “Rock” (Petros, Peter) on which he would build his “Church.” To him, this Rock, he gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and with these keys he would open and close, bind and loose. The Church would be impregnable against Satan, and its task would be to spread the faith.

The spread of faith in Jesus Christ, which is at the heart of our redemption and sanctification, was not simply left to a chance movement of interested parties, a movement that happened to fall on its feet and gain tremendous momentum. It was the formal mission of a divinely-established institution with its definite structure. At the same time, however, there is no suggestion in the New Testament that, say, the appointment of those seventy-two was permanent. It seems to have been ad-hoc and designed for the occasion. This itself reminds us that the spread of faith in Christ by the Church is not just the work of those who are part of its higher formal structure. So, while in one sense the seventy-two remind us of the structured character of the Church’s nature and mission, in a different sense they also remind us that this same mission is dependent on those who are what we might call the ordinary members. It is generally recognized that the triumph of the Christian religion in the Roman Empire was in large measure due to the witness given by the ordinary members. These members discovered Christ, gave their lives to him, continued on living in their families and in the midst of their ordinary communities doing their daily work, and bearing witness to Christ there in that setting. In times of persecution they suffered martyrdom. The Christian religion was a grassroots spread. Because of this manifest fact, some scholars have reduced the Christian religion to a mere movement. No. Rather, it embraced and involved a movement of witness but was not a mere movement. Those who bore witness to Jesus were part of Christ’s Church. In them, wherever they were, Christ’s Church was evangelizing the world, and in the Church, wherever it was, the Holy Spirit was evangelizing the nations. Let the seventy-two of today’s Gospel symbolize all classes of vocation within Christ’s Church. All are sent to evangelize the world. Some do so by professional vocation. Others do so within the setting of their ordinary workaday and family lives. All are called to holiness and to mission.

I like to think of the three whom the Gospels tell us were especially loved by our Lord. They were Martha, Mary and Lazarus. We do not read of them travelling with our Lord on mission in Galilee and Judea. But they loved him dearly, and had a magnificent faith in him — as we see from Martha’s words to Jesus when he arrived at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11: 27). They would have been a powerful witness to him in their everyday setting, both before and after the Resurrection. There was another who was especially loved by our Lord — the “beloved disciple,” John. He was one of the Twelve, a pillar of the infant Church. All the disciples of Christ have the calling to love him with all their hearts, and to bear witness to him before others. Let us all do this, then!

(E.J.Tyler)

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A Second Reflection: (Luke 10:1-12)

Jesus Sending Out His Disciples Very many people lead a fairly aimless life, which is to say a life with little sense of purpose. They kill time. Others have aims, but they are of little value. There are others who are burdened with worries that are of little consequence, while others have tremendous worries of real consequence. Christ our Lord has given each and every one of his disciples a great aim that ought fill their lives: to be his disciples totally and from the heart, and to be apostolic in life as well. “The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs to all the towns and places he himself was to visit.” What value our lives will have, if we have prepared the way for people to accept our Lord, be they members of our family, our workplace, our parish, or wherever!

There are so many things which preoccupy us and distract us from this great work. Let us resolve to work on being detached from whatever can hinder us from loving Christ and collaborating with him in his work. Let us accept from God, no matter how painful it is, his work of purifying us from all such attachments, and let us live for the work which Jesus has given us to do for him.

(E.J.Tyler)

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