JULY112024

Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick. By coincidence, or we might say providence, the gospel reading assigned for next Sunday is St. Mark’s version of this passage where Jesus gives marching orders to his disciples. There are interesting differences. In Mark’s text, the disciples can have a walking stick and wear sandals. We have no way of getting back to what Jesus actually said but there is a spiritual message we can glean from the differences. The various gospels were written fifty or so years after Jesus actually spoke those words. The communities remembered them as made sense in their context. The message of Jesus is not a rock but something living that blossoms differently in different soils. There is story about St. Francis Xavier. When he was in India he dressed as a poor man because the Indian people recognized a holy man as an ascetic. When he went to Japan he put on silk robes because the people there looked for the holy man among the elite. In our time where there are so many estranged from the gospel we must find the right “clothes” for the good news that will make sense to today’s generation.