Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: This is Sundays with Bishop Ken.
Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord today. We welcome guest reader Deacon Eric Bissette.
Deacon Eric is a beloved spiritual leader in his home parishes of the Diocese of Rochester, New York.
Little Book's listeners will recognize Deacon Eric as a regular narrator for our daily reflections.
And now, here is today's gospel and homily,
[00:00:46] Speaker B: A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew.
At the sight of the crowds, Jesus heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few.
So asked the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.
Then he summoned his 12 disciples and and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.
The names of the twelve apostles are.
First, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew.
James, the son of Zebedee and his brother John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James, the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus, Simon from Cana and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
Jesus sent out these 12 after instructing them.
Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town.
Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
As you go, make this proclamation.
The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.
Without cost. You have received without cost. You are to give the gospel of the Lord.
In the Gospels, Jesus preached repeatedly.
Repent. The reign of God is at hand.
He came to raise Judaism to a new level.
The word repent literally means to rethink.
Jesus wanted them to see things differently, to raise Judaism to the final stage in God's plan for all people and all creation.
Jesus didn't come to establish a new religion.
Jesus was born a Jew, raised a Jew, practiced the Jewish religion all his life, died a Jew and was buried a Jew.
The earliest disciples were Jewish and they practiced the Jewish religion.
It was only after they had fully observed the Sabbath and it was over that these Christians would gather to celebrate their special belief that Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God.
Late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, they came together to celebrate what Jesus did on the night before he died.
The Eucharist.
That's how it came to be that Christians celebrated the Eucharist on Sunday.
It wasn't until 70 AD, some 40 years after the death of Jesus, that a religion fully emerged from Judaism.
Christianity, though its roots still flowed from Judaism.
This separation happened because by then those who believed Jesus was the Messiah and the one God were no longer allowed in the synagogues.
So they began to develop into a separate group that would try to live out the message Jesus preached.
Christianity was born in a spirit of reform, and Christianity must never forget this reforming spirit.
There is an old Latin phrase in Christianity, semper reformanda.
It means always in need of reform.
The church can never stand where it is.
The reign of God doesn't quite fit the conditions of this world.
We're always going a bit against the prevailing wind and we can gradually go off course.
So the Christian community needs to constantly rethink where it's going, make course corrections and renew itself so it doesn't unconsciously begin to absorb and live by the values of the world.
We all need to catch the spirit of constant reform in every part of our lives.
We need to rise to the higher level to which Jesus has called us.
We can avoid this by simply thinking about how bad things are in the world.
We talk about countries and their failure to do what is necessary to achieve peace.
We get upset about crime and the irreligious attitude of many people and pornography on the Internet and people who have huge amounts of wealth while other people go hungry.
The list goes on and on.
We have a long list of things wrong with the world, but we tend to point out there away from ourselves.
But the values of the world silently creep into our own lives.
We forget about our condition of semper reformanda always in need of reform.
In today's gospel, Jesus sends out his disciples and tells them to preach the reign of God.
The call never stops. We constantly need to hear the Lord calling us to this way of life.
I pray all of us will take a good look at the lives we lead and make sure we're not settling for mediocrity.
I pray in our personal lives, in our family lives, in our work lives, we'll remember the phrase that has been part of the church from early times.
Semper reformanda.
Always in need of reform.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us today.
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