In the gospel today, as Jesus was readying his disciples for their mission trip, their first time to be on their own in their work of spreading the Good News, he reminds them not to be overwhelmed with lots of things that they do not really need for their journey. He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick – no food, no sack, no money in their belts, no second tunic. I remember reflecting on this gospel last year when I was driving a U-haul filled with stuff as I moved to Beaverton. It’s a little embarrassing. Now, I understand the wisdom behind those words of Jesus to his disciples, for indeed, if we are pre-occupied with things that we do not really need, then we might lose our focus on things that are truly essential. We live in a society where consumerism is so strong, every single day there are new things being marketed to us as something we need. When you turn on the televisions, there are perpetual sales being advertised; when you open your emails, before you can even read them, you are greeted with pop-up advertisements, enticing us to buy and buy and buy. It’s all over us. The world is inundated or flooded with the invitation to accumulate more. Two years ago, when Pope Francis received the credentials of four ambassadors to the Vatican, he gave this quite profound reflection: “The worldwide financial and economic crisis seems to highlight their distortions and, above all, the gravely deficient human perspective, which reduces man to one of his needs alone, namely, consumption. Worse yet, human beings themselves are nowadays considered as consumer goods, which can be used and thrown away. We have started a throwaway culture.” To think about it, there is nothing wrong with being in style or subscribing to the latest fad – they are blessings from God – they are signs of God’s continuous providence because, in many ways, they actually improve the quality of life BUT, there is a big BUT – they should never control us, and they should not be preferred over personal and meaningful relationships. One has to be able to wisely identify between a need and a want. Just like Jesus did a sort of airport security check to his disciples – making sure that they didn’t bring with them any harmful stuff that could be a potential danger to their mission—Jesus is asking us in the Gospel to do an inventory/lifestyle check of our own life as we partake in his evangelizing mission in virtue of our own baptism. Is my lifestyle consistent with the values of the Gospel? Am I focused on fulfilling the will of God, or am I focusing on other things that purely satisfy my own selfish and personal desires? And if one would ask: “what is the will of God for me?”, one does not have to look too far – our own chosen vocation as a husband, wife, father, mother, priest, son, daughter, single—blessedness is where we find, in the profoundest way, God’s will for us, which means that they must be of the utmost priority before anything else because our own unique vocation is our own participation in the building of the Kingdom of God. If there is anything that hinders us to grow in those roles, then we have to be able to learn to overcome them before they destroy those meaningful and lasting relationships that we have. This brings us to a deeper realization that when Jesus asked his disciples not to burden themselves with heavy luggage on their journey, he was not just speaking about material things, but also internal and emotional baggage that could hinder them to be credible in their proclamation of the Good News. For indeed, how can they be credible when they say “forgive others as God as has forgiven you” if they themselves have not forgiven those who have wronged them. How can they convince others of the joy of being in a relationship with God if it is purely done out of obligation or fear? Jesus tells us, as he reminded his disciples, that personal witnessing is key in our work of evangelization. Walking the talk. As what Francis of Assisi instructed his friars when he dispatched them in their missions “ Go and spread the Good News, use words if
necessary.” Use words only if necessary because our own life and our own relationships must already speak in itself the Gospel that we believe or the faith that we embrace. This takes a lot of self-emptying, a lot of humility, but we find comfort that the God who is the most powerful, all knowing, the source and end of all things, did not have a problem to empty his own self, embrace our own human poverty, our human condition, when he died in the most humiliating way on the cross. There can be no greater form of poverty than that. And in that poverty of Christ, we were given the richest and the most important gem: the kingdom of God, the promise of eternal life.
Let me end this homily with a reflection from Jerome K. Jerome, a well-known British humorist —on one his boat trips in Thames, he wrote: “How many people, on this voyage of life, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really useless lumber. Let your boat of life be light, packed only with what you need - a homey home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and
someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink. You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life's shine.” Fr. Rainero Cantalamesa, the official preacher of the Pope, affirms that Jerome K. Jerome’s ideas are not exactly the Gospel idea of joy and happiness, but it does tell us that simple life is not contrary to human happiness and contentment, but rather it’s wonderful ally. How is your boat of life right now? Is it pretty balanced or do we need to throw away some lumber to keep it floating and in balance? Von Voyage!
– Fr. Cary