Be Like the 72

Let us return to the basics

Photo: michalsanca via BigStockPhoto.com

This year, we focus on the Gospel of Luke. Many believe Luke wrote two gospels, the second we call the Acts of the Apostles. Remember, it is there that we see the words of Jesus: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes down upon you.”

Today, we see an example of that power. The seventy-two disciples receive a kind of delegation from Jesus and the power to go with the office to bring healing and freedom from the demonic. If you were to ask them what they did, they would tell you, they preach the word, heal people and cast out demons. This was the power given to them.

Where is that power today. It is in the work of the Church through its people. I have begun hospital ministry and spoke with one priest who told me of thirty-three healings he witnessed in his own thirty year career. We priests engage in the sacrament of reconciliation, this means we free people from their sins when they come to us for confession.

This means we must look upon others as Christ called the seventy-two disciples to look upon others. We must see not someone who others look upon as a loss or a burden to society but one that Christ wants to experience the healing power of the Gospel. He wants them to be free of the power of sin and to come to experience eternal life in Christ.

However, notice something else. Jesus tells the seventy-two, not to rejoice over what they do but that their names are written in Heaven. Notice the irony by the way, we don’t know their names but they are written in Heaven.

How many people today will tell people they have virtually no chance of getting to Heaven? They will tell people that if they assume they are going to Heaven that it is a sin. That is not what Jesus says. He tells them to rejoice that their names are written in Heaven. So must we do the same thing.

We have a calling to participate in the love of Christ. We have a calling to bring healing, not necessarily through miraculous means, although that is possible. We have a calling to bring people to repentance and freedom from sin and by doing so, we are acting as God’s agents. Our baptismal call, leads us to this action.

However, we can ask the question, when did the Church stop following this course of action. When did it become nothing more than a system of getting a minority of people into Heaven.

Today’s Gospel calls us to return to the mission of the seventy-two. Seek to live the Gospel and act as agents of love to all you encounter. You don’t have to say or do anything except not to condemn them by default. Remember, others dismiss them as lost souls, Jesus calls us to see them as potentially saved souls.

So let us take the lesson of Luke’s Gospel. Let us live as the seventy-two bringing the message of the Gospel in all that we do and not giving up on anyone except those who want us to give up on them.

Fr. Robert J Carr is the former pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Allston, MA

He is currently, the chaplain for two hospitals in Brockton, Massachusetts

His Patreon Page is patreon.com/catholicaudiomedia

He is the author of several books including: Christ in Your Humanity