Wednesday of Week 14 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 10:1-7
We begin today the second of the five discourses of Jesus which are a unique feature of Matthew’s Gospel. It consists of instructions to Jesus’ disciples on how they are to conduct their missionary work and the reactions they can expect in carrying it out.
It begins by the summoning of the inner circle of twelve disciples. Matthew presumes we already know about their formal selection, which he does not recount (the Gospel’s of Mark and Luke clearly distinguish the selection of the Apostles from their later missioning). These twelve disciples are now called Apostles.
The two words are distinct in meaning and we should not confuse them. A disciple (Latin discipulus, from discere, to learn) is a follower, someone who learns from a teacher and assimilates that teaching into his own life. An apostle (Greek, apostolos from apostello) is someone who is sent out on a mission, someone who is deputed to disseminate the teaching of the master to others. In the New Testament a distinction is made between the two. All the Gospels, for instance, speak of the Twelve Apostles and Luke mentions 72 Disciples.
However, that does not mean the two roles are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, all of us who are called to be disciples are also expected to be apostles, actively sharing our faith with others. It is very easy for us to see ourselves, ‘ordinary’ Catholics, as disciples and to regard priests and religious as doing the apostolic work of the Church. That would be very wrong. Every one of us called to be a disciple is, by virtue of Baptism and Confirmation, also called to be an apostle.
Applied to the twelve men (yes, they were all men – and thereby on which hang many disputes!) the word ‘apostle’ does have a special sense. They would become, so to speak, the pillars or foundations on which the new Church would be built, with Peter as their leader. They would have the special role of handing on and interpreting the tradition they had received from Jesus, a role which in turn they handed on to what we now call the bishops, with the pope, as leader and spokesperson.
Later on, Paul would be added to their number and Matthias would be chosen to replace the renegade Judas. In fact, it is interesting to see the mixed bunch of people that Jesus chose. We know next to nothing about most of them, but they were, for the most part, simple people – some of them definitely uneducated and perhaps even illiterate. Judas may well have been the most qualified among them. And yet we see the extraordinary results they produced, and the unstoppable movement they set in motion. The only explanation is that it was ultimately the work of God through the Holy Spirit.
The first instructions they are given are to confine their activities to their own people. They are not to go to pagans at this stage, or even to the Samaritans. As the heirs to the covenant and as God’s people, the Jews are to be the first to be invited to follow the Messiah and experience his saving power. And their proclamation is the same one that Jesus gave at the outset of his public preaching:
The Kingdom of Heaven [i.e. of God] has come near.