Readings: Ephesians 2:19-22; Psalm 19; Luke 6;12-19
“You are no longer strangers and aliens but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household 0f God …” (Eph. 2-19) and “Jesus went out to the mountain to pray…” (Luke 6:12)
It’s all about identity and belonging. Why did Jesus go up the mountain to pray? In Scripture mountains are places of identification and call. On another mountain He was reassured of Who He was, what He was called to be and do.
Today Jesus calls His disciples up the mountain and identified the twelve to be named and sent. They would be separated from each other, but not divided. Division means to have separated minds and hearts but still united.
These twelve had one name, “Apostles”: they were “sent” to unify God’s people by the hearing the Good News of who they were, “The People of God.” These people were different according to language and customs, but they were to be known, not by these accidental distinctions, but by their God-given essence.
There is much division in our world, Church, nations and families these days. Often it can be caused by a loss of a sense of belonging, of essential identity, when we make external things, more important than the sacred, inside things. I am for this leader; I hold this priority; I do not speak that strange language or do those strange religious things or wear those silly clothes. The more I define you by outside forces, the more I am forced to identify you by external realities. You become a thing defined by your ways which become a wall: it’s a form of blindness. I see in you only what separates you from me.
Pope Francis has been gently, directly, calling us back from division to “holy unity”. Our home is not our own, it belongs to us and those to whom we offer it. What Jesus is sending these Apostles to do is to announce something very new. That same message comes to us through the Church and its proclamation of Good News. What is “new” is about our taking away the priority we give to externals, the building of our false identities that protect us from change or conversion. Our real and deep identity has to do with our joining Jesus in His prayer up the mountain. Jesus, who do You send me to be and to do what?