July 7, 2019: 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

God calls us to be His disciples, having set us apart by the Paschal Mystery, freeing us from sin and bringing us into a new way of life.  He grants us a mission to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is at hand, present right with us now, and to help others see that it is present.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus sends out a group of 72, and in His instructions for them, He focuses their attention away from certain material goods that might accompany them, getting them to focus on their proclamation.

It is the proclamation that sustains us as we face difficulties, which St. Paul alludes to when he talks about "the marks of Jesus" on his body in the reading from Galatians.  While the realities of the world indicate that we will experience hardship as we seek to fulfill God's mission to us, we can rest in the assurance that God is leading us to Himself.

Indeed, regardless of how others respond, living out this mission helps us realize that we are on our way to Heaven, where we will experience His abundant Life, even as we experience it now.

So when the 72 return, rejoicing that the demons were subject to them, Jesus tells them, and even us, not to rejoice simply in how the demons respond to them, but that their, and our, "names are written in Heaven".

We truly rejoice in what God has done for us, and that He continues to accompany us so that what we do leads us to Himself, and we are truly bound for glory.