The Disciples are the called ones.
In today’s Gospel, Saint Mark explains the essential traits of the physiognomy of the disciple who is a chosen, separate, and holy person. In fact, the word «saint» comes from the correspondent Latin word that means «separated», separated from the world and from evil to enter the sphere of God. He or she is «set aside» for a special task, that of carrying the announcement of salvation to the whole world.
The disciple is the one who listens, believes and detaches himself or herself from the crowd to stand beside Christ and carry the announcement of his presence that has amazed him or her. The crowd listens to the words of Christ but then returns home. The disciple, on the other hand, remains with Christ and with him faithfully leads a life of communion and pilgrimage. He or she lives the choice and the separation not as distance from the others, but as proximity and familiarity with Christ. The life of communion with him becomes a mission.
What are the essential features of Christ ‘ disciples (those of that time and the ones of today)? They are: 1. complete abandonment in following, 2. loving trust, 3. being a missionary that carries joy.
In this Sunday’s Gospel passage, Saint Mark speaks of Jesus who sends his disciples on a mission. The disciple is the one who has left everything to follow Christ and become a missionary with such a confidence to use only poor means: a pair of sandals, a dress and a walking stick.
Therefore, the disciple is one who listens, believes, detaches from what is dear to him and places himself in the wake of Jesus, who has become the dearest to him: Jesus is the precious pearl.
The disciple remains with Christ and leads a common and itinerant life with him, who sends him on a mission. There is also another aspect of the disciple: he is sent on a mission. Indeed, St. Mark tells us that Christ sent his disciples to fulfil the mission of proclaiming to all not only that salvation is near but that the Savior can be encountered through the presence of his disciples of new life.
This is also true today because Christianity lives as a fact and communicates itself as a real encounter.
However, it must be kept in mind that the Christian disciple is first of all a person called by God who has become an encounter. Properly speaking, a person does not become a Christian by autonomous choice; he or she becomes so by answering to a call. In fact, there is a love that precedes our response. This is what Christ taught us when he said: «You did not choose me, but I chose you». Saint Paul writes «In Christ (the Father) has chosen us before the creation of the world to be holy and immaculate in his presence in charity «(Eph 1: 46). Already the Old Testament, from Abraham onwards, places God at the origin of every call; the initiative to start the history of salvation of the people of Israel is entirely by the Lord. «Abraham, called by God, obeyed» (Heb 11: 8).
Even in the narratives of the prophetic vocations, the primacy of a God that calls is clearly revealed. Exemplary is the story of Amos, which we hear in the first reading of this Sunday’s Mass. This prophet is driven by his vocation to a hard confrontation with the injustices of the political power. Furthermore, he must clash with the cold considerations of the «court chaplain», the priest Amaziak, who exhorts him to prudence. Amos replies to the priest that at the root of his words there is not a personal choice linked to his own perspectives. It is God himself who forced him with a very specific call: «I was not a prophet, nor a son of a prophet; I was a shepherd and a collector of sycamores; the Lord took me from following the cattle, and the Lord said to me, «Go, prophesy among my people Israel» (Am 7: 14-15).
Disciples, namely missionaries.
Not only the prophet is called to be a missionary. The disciple too is sent on a mission, as the today’s Gospel passage[1] (6: 7-13) makes us meditate. In fact, the evangelist Mark underlines that Jesus «sent them» and this involves at least the awareness of being sent by God and not by one’s own decision. They are sent for a project in which the disciples are involved but of which they are not the owners.
Today, as then, Christians, who as such are disciples of Christ, are sent as Missionaries of the Merciful Truth. Today, as then, the disciples invite people to conversion and give relief to suffering.
The message, which in the name of Christ they announce, is an invitation to conversion: «Turn towards the light because the light is already here. Pure and holy are our hands on the sick with which we announce: God is already here, is close to you with love, and heals life. Turn towards him «.
It is important to understand Jesus’ evangelical insistence on poverty as an indispensable condition for the mission: neither bread nor bag nor money. It is a poverty that is faith, freedom and lightness. First of all, freedom and lightness: a disciple weighed down by a baggage becomes sedentary, conservative, unable to grasp the novelty of God and very skillful in finding a thousand convenient reasons to judge the house in which he is accommodated and that he no longer wants to leave. Moreover, poverty is also faith: it is the sign of those who do not trust in themselves but rely on God.
There is also another aspect that cannot be forgotten: the «dramatic» atmosphere of the mission. Rejection is foreseen (Mk 7:11): the word of God is effective, but in its own way. The disciple must proclaim the message and get completely involved in it, but he must leave the result to God. A task has been assigned to the disciple, but success is not guaranteed.
Moreover, it is important not to forget that the disciple is not only called to be a teacher, but also a witness who engages in the struggle against Evil because he is on the side of truth, freedom and love,
Finally, we must not forget that to be missionaries we must first be disciples of Christ and listen always again to the invitation to follow him imitating him: «Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart» (Mt 11,29). A disciple, in fact, is a person who listens to the Word of Jesus (cf. Lk 10:39) recognized as the Master who loved us up to the gift of life. Therefore, for each of us, it is a matter of letting ourselves be molded each day by the Word of God. It will make us friends of the Lord Jesus and able to bring others into this friendship with Him. This fraternal friendship with Christ, the center of our life, allows us to go to the human peripheries to carry to everyone the truth of Christ, incarnate Love.
A particular way of being «disciples-missionaries» (Pope Francis) is the one of the consecrated virgins who, living and working in the world, meet the people who live and work in the existential peripheries. There is a feminine style in living the mission, a way of being disciple-missionary like the Virgin Mary, the Disciple-Missionary par excellence. More than to Mnason of Cyprus, who hosted St. Paul on his journey from Caesarea to Jerusalem, it is to Our Lady that the title of «disciple of the first hour» competes (Acts 21: 16) because she believed in the Son of God the Most High at the very moment in which he was incarnated in her womb by the work of the Holy Spirit.
Mary is the first missionary because she first brought Christ on the roads of the world to go to her cousin Elizabeth. She was a missionary who brought not a speech, but the Gospel incarnated. The consecrated Virgins in a special way imitate Our Lady through vigilance and prayer, that is, through the custody of the heart offered to Christ with the gift of their virginity and docility to the Holy Spirit. Through a discreet life in the world, the consecrated virgins live a personal focus, thanks to which they dedicate themselves to listening to the Word of God. On their example, may our heart and mind keep alive the maternal love that animates all those cooperating in the apostolic mission of the Church for the regeneration of men (cf. Lumen Gentium, 65). Every Christian is called to take up Mary’s attitude to motherly animate the evangelical proclamation of Christ, and to exercise the «power» of serving the Lord in the brothers and sisters in humanity, living in one’s own situation the virginal fruitfulness of the Church, as the consecrated Virgins witness.
[1] “Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick— no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic. He said to them,
“Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave. Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.” So they went off and preached repentance. The Twelve drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” ( Mk 6,7-13)
