THE TEXT BELOW IS THE TRANSCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO COMMENTARY BY FR. FERNANDO ARMELLINI

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A good Sunday to all. 

Last week, we saw Jesus’s failure in Nazareth; not only his fellow villagers but also his relatives did not believe in him; they stood firm in their positions, in what they had always considered right. And here we have a first important message for us: you can love Jesus as his fellow villagers and his disciples did, even though his relatives loved him; they esteemed him. One can love Jesus without believing in him. Why does this happen? We say that if we had been in Nazareth, we would have said Yes to Jesus. And it’s true; if we reasoned as we do today, we would have said yes. 

The inhabitants of Nazareth said NO because they understood what it meant to say Yes: adhering to the Gospel means saying Yes to changing the image of God, to changing the image of a successful man; it means changing the image of society. These were too radical changes for Jesus, and they said NO. How is it that we say Yes so quickly? Because we love Jesus, we love him, but we have not understood what it means to say Yes, to believe in the Gospel. When we listen to the beatitudes, we say, ‘How beautiful,’ and we feel like disciples of Jesus because we admire what he said, and we are convinced to practice a little bit of what he says. Still, when we think about the ideal person he proposes to us: the one who makes himself poor, the one who puts all that he possesses, all his abilities, not at the service of his enjoyment, of his pleasure, but at the service of the life and joy of his brother and sister, even of his enemy, even of the one who has harmed him, we feel an inner repulsion when we understand this. 

Until we experience this repulsion, we have not understood, because of the law of the flesh (says Paul). What comes to us instinctively, with the immediate impulse, is contrary to what the Spirit proposes. When we consider what Jesus said about those two sons: the first, to whom the father says, ‘Go work in the vineyard,’ says, ‘Yes,’ but then doesn’t go. When he understands what it entails, he doesn’t go, but the second one immediately says NO and then goes; he says NO because he has understood what it entails to adhere to what the father says; only afterward does he give his adherence. 

Here is the importance for us: the need to make the experience that the inhabitants of Nazareth have had. The first answer that comes to us instinctively, and that we must make, is to say NO. Let us remember the elder son in the parable of the prodigal son, who says to his father: You are not righteous because you treat a runaway just as I, who work, who give myself to work, always obey; it is unfair. Here is the repulsion felt before the proposal of a new face of God that Jesus of Nazareth makes. Or what happens to Jonah, who says to God: You are not just because you do not punish the Ninevites. This is the first message that we can already take from what happened in Nazareth. 

What happens now? This is today’s gospel passage. In the face of the rejection of his Gospel in Nazareth, which was reiterated later in today’s Gospel, ‘This rejection will happen to you also because it means that they understood what you propose, what my proposal is.’ How did Jesus behave? Maybe we would have been discouraged; we would have dropped our arms, but Jesus did not. He went out from Nazareth and began to go through all the surrounding villages, preaching the Gospel. And not only did he resume his mission, but let us now hear what he did: 

At that time, Jesus summoned the Twelve, began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over unclean spirits. 

Jesus wanted to put an end to the old world and start a new one; he would have to count on success, because adhering to his proposal is not easy. He also knows that he cannot carry out this plan of salvation on his own. He knows that his life is limited; at a certain point, it will end. He must involve the disciples in his project; they are those who have believed in him and have given him their adherence. So, what does Jesus do? He calls them to himself. It’s not about approaching him in a material sense; they’re already there around him. What does it mean to call them to himself? 

Jesus is speaking to us because we are the disciples he now wants to send out to carry forward his salvation project by announcing the Gospel. To draw near to Jesus means that before we go to announce the Gospel to others, we must first have announced it to ourselves; we must have assimilated it; we must establish a deep attunement with it, with the person of Jesus, with his choices, and with his lifestyle. Only the one who has been with Jesus can go to announce to others and be credible, because he will present himself with the joy of one who has discovered a great treasure and wants to involve those he loves, so they can be happy in this experience of the encounter with Christ. 

There is a big difference between giving a math or physics lesson and proclaiming the Gospel. The catechist is not someone who teaches a doctrine but someone who embodies a proposal for life and is happy to have lived it and to communicate their experience of joy to others. After having had this experience of being with Christ, one is sent. Jesus sends these disciples. Let us note that he does not send just anybody; he sends someone with this task, such as priests, deacons, or consecrated persons in the religious life. NO. 

Every disciple must feel sent; otherwise, they are not a disciple and are not involved in this plan of salvation. The disciple who does not feel the need to share the gift received with others is probably not yet convinced that they have discovered the meaning of their own life by finding Christ. 

And he sends them out two by two. This is a Jewish practice for maintaining contact among synagogues; they didn’t send a single individual, but always a couple, because this reflects the idea of credible, reliable witnesses. In the New Testament, we often find these couples: Peter and John went to the temple together after the Passover; then, especially when the community of Antioch decided to send heralds that the Messiah had come, they sent them to the different synagogues spread throughout the Roman empire; the community of Antioch sent two: Barnabas and Saul; then there were two more: Barnabas and Mark, Paul and Silas, Paul and Timothy; always in pairs. 

This also has an important theological meaning: the couple signifies community, which means that the one who will announce the Gospel is an expression of community and part of the Church. There is a substantial difference between Hinduism, Buddhism, and all the ascetic practices that aim to achieve liberation, spiritual perfection, or inner balance. There is a significant difference between Christianity and these practices; the latter can be lived in solitude, in complete isolation, but not Christianity. It can only be lived in a community, and there must be at least two of us to form a community. 

Let’s recognize the joy of being an announcer and part of a community, sent by a community, in tune with the thoughts and feelings of a community. The Church is not an association of friends united by mutual sympathy but by brothers and sisters; friends are chosen, and we are responsible for our friendships, not for our brothers and sisters; these are not chosen, and therefore we are united in this community not by sympathy but by the love of Christ, which is unconditional and knows no barriers. It may be difficult to be part of a community, but we will be credible when we proclaim the Gospel if we are united and feel part of a community. When we hear about the Church, we don’t say ‘the Church’ but ‘my Church,’ where I am happy to belong, even though it has so many limits and defects. I am part of this Church. 

Then, Jesus gives power to these envoys, ‘exusia’ in Greek. This is the only power he gives his disciples; no other power. For us, ‘power’ means the authority to command, give orders, and obey. No, the only authority he gives his disciples is to cast out unclean and impure spirits. This is what Jesus will say at the end of his life, after the Passover, to the disciples on the mount, as Matthew says: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” 

What power did Jesus receive? The power to cast out unclean spirits from the world. What are unclean spirits? He did not give us the power to use holy water for exorcisms. No, unclean spirits are everything that fights against life, everything that dehumanizes. Unclean spirits are the uncontrollable eagerness, the greed to accumulate goods, to have more and more, even at the cost of committing injustice, making wars, and destroying creation. This is a spirit that is against life; if we let it act, it dehumanizes us. We know very well that this unclean spirit moves our world. 

Jesus gives us the power to overcome these unclean spirits that we think are invincible. How many times have we said it: ‘The power of the economy, of finance, who controls them?’ This is where Jesus gives us exactly this ‘exusia,’ this power that is his Word and his Spirit, which overcomes all dehumanizing spirits. The unclean spirit pushes people to seek only what they like. It seems invincible because the instinct leads precisely to this; the inner drive leads to withdrawing into oneself. Jesus has given us the power to conquer these dehumanizing spirits. This spirit pushes you to attack, to commit violence, to make wars, and to see those who are different from you as an enemy. 

All these spirits create a cruel world, and they seem invincible. We say it many times: ‘This degradation of society… ‘ Today there is a whole conception of life that is invincible, and it will become even worse. From the human perspective, evil forces are powerful because it is precisely this instinctive drive that leads in an inhuman direction. 

This is what Jesus promises: ‘My Word, my Spirit, expels these unclean demons.’ But it is necessary to announce this Gospel, because where the Gospel reaches, these unclean spirits can no longer remain; it is one or the other. Hence, the necessity of announcing this Word. Then, faith is necessary. Whoever does not believe in this authority, in this power that Jesus has given us, will not be able to move and is destined to let the ancient world continue to dehumanize. Now, Jesus explains how the disciples sent to proclaim his Gospel should present themselves. Let us listen: 

He instructed them to take nothing for the journey except a walking stick—no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic. 

Before sending out the disciples, Jesus gives instructions introduced by the Greek verb ‘paranghélei,’ meaning ‘to give orders.’ According to Mark, this is the only time in the Gospel that Jesus gives orders, which is why they are significant. First of all, he says what they can take for the road, and it’s a beautiful image of the disciple on a journey; he has no stable abode here but a destiny beyond this world. 

What should they carry with them? A walking stick. An interesting detail: Mark says that Jesus permitted them to take a walking stick, while Matthew and Luke say not to carry one. Why? These walking sticks have different meanings. According to Matthew and Luke, it is the poor’s weapon; this is what Matthew forbids. Matthew is the evangelist who, more than the others, insists on the disciple’s nonviolence; and only Matthew refers to Jesus’s words to Peter, “Put the sword back in the sheath.” The new world is not built by violence. According to Matthew, everything that recalls instruments of violence is excluded from the Gospel. 

Instead, the walking stick has a different meaning in today’s passage. To fulfill his mission to perform wonders, God gives Moses the staff with which he divides the Red Sea and makes water flow from the rock. It symbolizes the power God gives the disciple who must carry out an extraordinary mission. Likewise, the disciple of Christ, who must change the world by announcing the Gospel, carries a staff, a symbol of the power God gives. And this is the only power on which the disciple must rely to learn the power of the Word and the Spirit of Christ; not in alliances with the powers of this world, not in money, no, that spoils everything. 

And then we hear what they should not take with them, and Jesus resorts to paradoxes. But we must be careful not to give reductive interpretations to his words, because this would disfigure his message and deprive it of its provocative content. A very delicate subject is one of the Church’s assets. We know all the criticisms that the secular world makes of the Church precisely because of the riches it possesses and the grandeur of certain structures. 

Well, what does Jesus tell the disciples? They should present themselves as people who use this world’s goods but remain detached from them, not absolutizing them. Christians thank the Creator; they do not despise the goods of this world because they know that they are gifts given by God for the life of his sons and daughters. But the center of the message that the disciple is called to proclaim is the ultimate destiny of man’s life; it is a life that goes beyond this life. If the disciple begins to accumulate goods, it implies that they are also engaged in this world as if it were their ultimate destiny. They cannot go around preaching the values of the Gospel. 

When you have the necessities of life, when you have your daily bread, the rest belongs to the brother and the sister, because the disciple always keeps in mind that, at the end of life, in the customs house, all goods of this world that have not been given to the brothers and sisters and, therefore, have not been transformed into love, will be requisitioned. 

Let us remember how the first disciples put into practice this disposition of Jesus. When Peter and John go to the temple, they find a paralytic at the Beautiful Gate. Peter says to him, “Look at us.” The paralytic expects alms, but Peter says, “I have neither silver nor gold; I give you only what I have: in the name of Jesus Christ, walk.” And Paul, in a beautiful passage in the 20th chapter of the book of Acts, when he greets the elders of Ephesus, says to them, “You know that for my needs and the needs of those who were with me, these hands of mine have labored, and yet I have shown you that you must help the weak by laboring as I have done, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, who said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive,’ a phrase of Jesus that is not preserved in the gospels but was preserved by Paul. 

Therefore, only what is necessary, but do not accumulate. Otherwise, the disciple could not proclaim the Gospel; if he did, it would not be credible. “Take no food, no sack”… Why? Simply because it will spoil. The disciple is not allowed to keep provisions for the next day. The bread the disciple asks the Father for is his daily bread, and if he has any left over, he will give it to the hungry and the needy. 

Then, “no money in their belts.” This is a finesse worth remembering. Here, money is called ‘jalkós,’ which in Greek means copper. Copper and bronze were used to make change, not gold or silver. Jesus says the disciple must not keep even small change. We are in a paradox, but let us try not to lose the provocative sense of Jesus’s disposition. Let us remember what the wise man asks in the book of Proverbs, chapter 30. He asks two things of the Lord and says: “Do not withhold from me, O God, before I die, two things; I ask you not to give me poverty and not to give me riches; let me have my piece of bread. Why do I ask these two things? Because if you give me riches, I could say to the Lord, I am no longer interested in you because I have all that I like; do not give me poverty because, in poverty, I might steal or even curse.” These are the two things the wise person asks for, neither riches nor poverty. 

Throughout the centuries, we know that the Church has paid dearly for her attachment to the goods of this world and her alliances with political powers, and thus has lost credibility. Let us recall some words of Bishop Hilary of Poitiers in the fourth century, when Constans, the son of Constantine, had begun not to persecute the Church but to favor her. Hilary of Poitiers says: ‘We no longer have an anti-Christian emperor who persecutes us, but we must fight against a much more insidious persecutor, an enemy who does not persecute us but flatters us, does not scourge our skin but caresses our bellies; he does not confiscate our goods because he would give us back our life, but enriches us to give us death. He does not push us toward freedom by putting us in prison, but towards slavery by inviting us to palace parties; he does not strike our bodies, but takes hold of our hearts, does not cut off our heads with the sword, but kills our souls with money.’ This is why he warned his disciples (us) about an inappropriate relationship with this world’s goods.

Then, “they were, however, to wear sandals.” Here he speaks of clothing. Interestingly, Luke forbids sandals because Luke insists on the poverty with which the disciples present themselves, the total detachment from this world’s goods. In Israel, they went barefoot, but Mark writes in a different context; he writes for the Romans, and in Rome, the beggars and slaves went barefoot, but the disciples must not present themselves as what they are not; they are not beggars, they are not slaves, they are people detached from this world’s goods but free. This is the reason they must go in sandals. 

“That they should not have a second tunic.” The tunic signifies that even dress is reduced to the essential, the indispensable. And this one tunic also has another meaning. The New Testament consistently insists that the disciple is clothed with Christ; this is the only robe they must wear, not two robes: one robe of Christ when they are in the Church, and later, when it comes to money or other things, they wear the pagan robe. This meaning of the one tunic appears in the letter to the Romans; Paul says: “Clothe yourselves with the Lord;” that whosoever meets you must see Christ in your words, in your way of reasoning, in your way of acting, and see the person of Christ. The tunic indicates how we appear on the outside. And the letter to the Ephesians says, “Put on the new man.” In the letter to the Colossians: “Put on tenderness, kindness, humility, meekness, magnanimity.” Therefore, not two lifestyles, that is, living in duplicity, in ambiguity. 

Preaching: they are sent; he foresees they may be well received or rejected. How should the disciple behave when they are not well received and when they are well received? Let us listen: 

He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave. Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they went off and preached repentance. They drove out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick, curing them. 

What will happen to the disciples who are sent to announce the Gospel? First, Jesus says that the disciples were sent out to proclaim the Gospel, not to wait for someone to come looking for them; they must be the ones to take the message to the people in their homes, that is, in all the environments in which they live, at work, in politics, in sports, even in entertainment. Christians present themselves as embodying a proposal of life that is not pagan. They behave, reason, speak, and live in a different way than the pagans. And they will also announce the reasons for these choices. 

What will happen? They can be accepted or rejected, and here Jesus offers some indications for the missionaries who are going to announce the Gospel, but the message is also addressed to the whole Church. “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave from there.” What does it mean? Does it mean you visit only one family and then that’s it, you’re done, and you neglect everyone else? This is not the meaning. Jesus says that whoever goes to announce the Gospel will find good, pious, and generous people who will be close to them, help them, and offer them hospitality. 

The first lodging is never the best; it is always a surprise accommodation; missionaries who have gone to distant lands know it well; it is a precarious situation in which one tries to adapt and live as one can. Then the missionaries certainly meet people who are well disposed toward them. They receive offers of more comfortable residences, then even better ones, and so on, until they settle in palaces. Here is the danger: Jesus recommends staying in the first house; the disciples are asked to give testimony to an austere, sober life, alien to any expectation of using wealth. Credibility is at stake in the mission itself. 

This is true for missionaries and for the whole Church. When even the shadow of wealth or pomp appears, the Gospel loses credibility. It is also an invitation to trust in hospitality. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22, Jesus asks the disciples: “Did you lack anything when I sent you out without a purse or bag or sandals?” They answered: “Nothing.” The one who announces the Gospel must trust in the presence of the Lord in their life, who accompanies and assists them. 

They can be accepted, but they can also be rejected; how should one behave? Jesus says: “Leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.” This gesture of shaking the dust was made by every Israelite when he went out of the pagan land and entered the holy land; he did not have to bring even the dust of the pagan land with him. In Jesus’ mouth, this gesture has a different meaning. It is not a rejection of pagans or of those who do not accept the Gospel message; the original text says, “as a testimony for them,” in their favor. Here, leaving the pagan in his condition means respect for his options. 

A Christian cannot censure or bother people by shouting about his faith and his reasons. No, he’s making a life proposal, one to which he adheres out of love and therefore in total freedom. The disciples are sent to propose life, not to enter ideological battles; there is no sense in a televised debate in which each tries to shout louder than the others. This is not the way to proclaim the Gospel. 

Even for Christians, the goal is not to secure conversions and increase numbers. He must only faithfully announce the word of Christ, incarnating it in his life. Whether adhered to or rejected, the abundant fruits do not depend on them but on the soil where this seed of the Gospel falls. 

But shaking the dust from his sandals also has another meaning. I would say that when one enters pagan land, it is inevitable that a bit of pagan dust sticks to your clothes, and when you return to your own home, this dust must be removed. Let’s take a simple example: if I enter into a dialogue with someone who is very far from the evangelical proposal, he will reason in a completely different way; for this person, everything is allowed and lawful… There is no need to be a medievalist, retrograde… Let’s be careful, because these pagan speeches leave some pagan dust in us. When we return home, contact with the Gospel must also purify us from this dust. 

The conclusion is that the disciples go out and preach, announcing ‘metanoia,’ conversion, leaving behind the pagan way of life and reasoning, and welcoming the new life, the new world proposed by Christ. In fact, with the power that Jesus gave them, they cast out many demons wherever the Gospel reaches; these are the demons we were talking about; they can no longer remain, and here is the healing of a whole society that is converted into a truly human society, that is, composed of sons and daughters of God and living as brothers and sisters. 

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.