Take Nothing for the Journey | Sunday Reflection | 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

By: Fr. Marcelo Ferrari, Class of 2024

“He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick—no food, no sack, no money in their belts.” (Mark 6:8)

Today, Mark invites us into the mission of The Twelve. On the surface its conditions were quite stark. They were deprived of every comfort, every preference; they were not consulted, they had no compensation or reward for their labors, they didn’t even have the assurance of basic nourishment… they simply received their mission and a staff.

It may seem an exaggerated or radical request from Jesus, but this kenosis—total self-emptying—served as a means of admittance into the intimacy of the Divine Mission. They carry nothing, so that they might be carried into the one who sent them. The mission itself is its own reward for they are called to Himself.

In their self-denial, they are stripped that they might be clothed with the form of their Savior. The Twelve are literally incorporated into the Body of Christ. The Apostles take unto themselves the very action of Christ: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave… he humbled himself” (Philippians 2:7-8).

By their obedience, those who received them began to see in these first missionaries the very hands of Christ. They heard the very words of Jesus, and experienced that same saving power of the one who sends.

I was recently blessed with the opportunity to experience this gift of mission first hand. I was accompanying a dying daughter and her grieving mother through the final moments of a terminal cancer diagnosis. On my final visit, she received the threefold gifts of the Last Rites: reconciliation, apostolic pardon and anointing. She passed a few hours later. As I finished praying for her, the mother approached me. Clinging to the hands which had just anointed her daughter she thanked me: “You saved her!” As she spoke those words of gratitude it became abundantly clear that she was not addressing me, she was speaking to the one who sent me. She saw in my hands the saving power of Christ. She heard in my voice the words of our loving Savior.

I was sent, but Christ was received.