From the responsorial psalm: “A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me. Cast me not out from your presence, and your Holy Spirit take not from me. My mouth will declare your praise.”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew (Mt 10:16-23)
Jesus said to his Apostles: “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves. But beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans.”
As Jesus sends out the apostles, he is explicit about the persecutions they will experience as they face leaders and authorities of his day. Witnesses of the Gospel to pagans, they will be led before courts, synagogues, governors, and kings. After saying all of this, Jesus tells them not to worry about how they are to speak or what they are to say but that the Spirit of the Father will speak through them. The persecution they will face is not merely in the public sphere but among family members—brother against brother, father against child, and children against parents. But Jesus tells them, “whoever endures to the end will be saved.” Although counterintuitive, the worst-case scenario Jesus presents to the apostles is the means of their salvation and participation in the life to come through his death and resurrection. Jesus takes great care in ensuring the apostles that despite the hardship and persecution, he is with them.
God, help me see in today’s Gospel what is within reach and relevant to me. The people I face today are not persecuting governors or courts or kings but those who are closest to me, those I face at work and at places close to home. I ask, Lord, to know how to give witness to the Gospel—to give conscious attention to you and your ways throughout the day and to the world’s ways use only what is necessary. That is where life is and where I want to give witness to my trust in you; left to myself and without your initiative, I quickly turn for fulfillment to things. Help me recall during the day the words you spoke through Hosea: “Straight are the paths of the LORD, in them the just walk, but sinners stumble in them.”
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.