Today, we celebrate the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, a day that reminds us of God’s profound, unchanging love and his universal call to mission. In the first reading, God offers the people of Israel a wonderful future, proposing an alliance with them after freeing them from slavery in Egypt. He promises that if they listen to his voice and remain faithful, they will become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation—a people set apart and reserved for God. However, over the centuries, this message of hope suffered in transmission. By the time of Jesus, the religious leaders had diminished this grand vision, labeling only those who rigidly followed minutely detailed regulations as “holy,” while casting out the helpless and harassed as “sinners.”
It was precisely for these forgotten people, living without direction or purpose, that Jesus came to bring new hope. As the Gospel reveals, Jesus looks upon the crowds with deep compassion because they are like sheep without a shepherd. In a world where people are often only interested in furthering their own careers and comfort—ignoring the hungry, sick, and oppressed—Jesus acts. He calls and sends out the twelve apostles, a number intentionally linked to the twelve tribes of Israel, to signal the restoration and birth of a new people of God: the Church. The apostles are commanded to bring a radical message of hope: the Kingdom of God is at hand, and a new sort of life is available to everyone.
Our confidence in this new life does not rely on our own strength, as Saint Paul powerfully reminds us in the second reading to the Romans. Paul assures us that our salvation is not based on our good works, our qualities, or our unstable fidelity, but entirely on God’s unchanging love. Human love is weak; we rarely sacrifice for anyone outside our friends and family. Yet, God proved his love by giving his only Son to save us while we were still his enemies and far from him. If God loved us so deeply when we were broken, how much more will he sustain us now that he has justified us? Our sins will never overpower his love; we may abandon him, but he will never abandon us.
This overwhelming grace demands a response, shifting our focus from ourselves to the welfare of others. When Jesus orders his disciples to cure the sick, raise the dead, and drive out devils, he is not just speaking of physical miracles without medicine. Instead, these are vivid images of the spiritual and physical warfare every Christian is called to wage against anything that ruins human life. To undertake this mission, Jesus recommends that we pray. The true aim of prayer is not to convince God to change his mind, but to transform our own hearts from selfishness to generosity, a total conversion of behaviour that allows us to see the world through Christ’s eyes.
In conclusion, every single disciple of Christ, regardless of status, has been entrusted with this vital ministry. We are the modern Church, mandated to go out and proclaim that the Kingdom of God is close at hand through our tangible works of love. May we allow our hearts to be broken by what breaks the heart of Jesus, and may our prayer drive us into the world to fight for the spiritual and physical healing of our brothers and sisters. Amen.