A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark (Mk 3:13-19)
Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those whom he wanted and they came to him. He appointed Twelve, whom he also named Apostles, that they might be with him and he might send them forth to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.
Mark names two reasons Jesus commissioned apostles: to preach and to drive out demons. The reasons seem, at first, to be limited. Of all things an apostle commissioned by Christ might do, Mark mentions only these two. Yet, countless times in the Gospel, the evangelists say that Jesus went throughout the region, preaching and driving out demons. With a word, himself the living Word, Jesus cast out unclean spirits. So in commissioning them to preach and drive out demons, Jesus gives unlimited authority to the Twelve to teach and heal as he taught and healed. The teaching and healing authority of Christ lives today in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church—Mother and Teacher—in apostolic succession, in proclaiming the Kingdom of God, and in the sacraments.
God, help me trust in the living succession of faith that Jesus Christ your Son established in commissioning the Twelve. They were the first to sit at the feet of Christ and hear and take in the Word. It’s miraculous that the deposit of faith has been transmitted unbroken from generation to generation. Give me the grace, Lord, to be humble and grateful in receiving your Word as it has been passed down from age to age. What is the truth about Jesus and the foundation of the Church? Glory to you, Lord, this is not shrouded in mystery and lost to the ages; truth is a person, present in the Mystical Body of Christ and boldly proclaimed in the Church.
From the Gospel acclamation: “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.”
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.