Homily for Wednesday, 9 July 2014– Ferial

Wednesday of the 14th week in Ordinary Time 

Optional Memorial of St. Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions, Martyrs

Readings of the day: Hosea 10:1-3, 7-8, 12; Psalm 105:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Matthew 10:1-7

Have any of us ever wondered at how and why Jesus chose twelve ordinary people to be his first apostles? To these twelve ordinary people Jesus entrusts some extraordinary tasks. We hear in our Gospel reading from Matthew that Jesus “gave [the Twelve] authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.” And then Jesus instructs the Twelve: “As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”

These are extraordinary tasks for ordinary people indeed! The Twelve Apostles included fishermen; a tax collector; several of whom we know next to nothing besides their inclusion in the lists of the Twelve in our Gospels. Among the Twelve were ordinary people; weak people; men who would fail completely in their tasks as apostles by betraying or denying even knowing Jesus; who would either repent with the help of God’s mercy or fail to recognize and to trust in this mercy.

Today we hear the names of the first apostles, twelve very ordinary people, during our continued celebration of ordinary time, the longest season of the Church year. How are we, like the apostles, for the most part ordinary people celebrating this ordinary time of our Church? And yet how are we, like the Twelve, given some extraordinary tasks as Christian disciples? How do we go about accomplishing these tasks to which we have been commissioned by Jesus Christ through our Christian baptism?

The central task of our faith has not changed from that of the first apostles: “As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” How do we, mostly ordinary people as the first apostles were, go about proclaiming that “the Kingdom of heaven is at hand”?

One way of proclaiming the Kingdom of God here and now among us is to gather for worship as one faith community; one parish, St. Kateri. By our unity of faith we proclaim decisively that “the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” We make this proclamation as ordinary people in this, our celebration of ordinary time. But this proclamation we are invited to make beginning with our communal worship; our communion as sisters and brothers in Christ, is not so ordinary. Is it not something in fact quite extraordinary that we witness and of which we partake: Ordinary bread and wine that becomes for us the body and blood of Christ?

In our Eucharist; in our community’s worship, the ordinary meets the extraordinary. And then we are empowered by this communion; this Eucharistic celebration as one faith community to go into our world to love and to serve one another in Christ’s name.

Is this not extraordinary, this central task of our faith? Come as one community of faith to worship the Lord our God; go out to serve in the name of the Lord our God. This is an extraordinary task given to us, especially as we are invited anew to take up this task amid our celebration of ordinary time. For us the ordinary and the extraordinary meet and embrace. The extraordinary central task of our faith is the same as that given to Jesus’ first apostles: “Make this proclamation” by word; action; communal worship: “‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”