2025 Jul 6 SUN: FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Is 66: 10-14c/ Ps 66: 1-3. 4-5. 6-7. 16. 20 (1)/ Gal 6: 14-18/ Lk 10: 1-12. 17-20

Our Scriptures begin today with an image from the prophet Isaiah of the most natural thing in the world: a mother feeding her child with her own milk. It is an image of comfort. And comfort is something that we all need. We turn then to the Gospel and it seems as if there's not much in the way of comfort. These 72 disciples are to go out on Jesus' command to proclaim the Kingdom of God in various towns. And Jesus himself seems to foresee, well, you're going in among wolves. That doesn't sound very comforting. They go in pairs and if we, if we reflect on this, we realize that if two people can get along with each other that would seem to be a proof of the integrity of what they are talking about.

And it happens that they come back rejoicing. They are proclaiming and in so many cases successfully proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Now that expression is something that we hear very often but we may not have a good grasp of it. We know the kingdom of the world. We know that our world operates according to many rules that need to be discarded. We proclaim the Kingdom of God to the extent that our own hearts are changed, to the extent that we bring God's peace and love into our own social situations. And in fact we are instruments of this kingdom. Our hearts have been changed and from those changed hearts we bring comfort to the world and we ourselves find comfort. So we must all live on behalf of the Kingdom of God and we must all be disciples like these 72. We take responsibility for bringing good news to a world which needs to be healed and comforted.

These 72 came back rejoicing. You and I, as we carry out our own discipleship, may find that the process is wearying; but we know that our God gives us the perseverance which is necessary for us to keep going. A perseverance which has a goal in mind: our own fullness of life. We hear today from St. Paul at the end of his letter to the Galatians and he is reflecting on the ways in which God has changed him and how he has found that he is to preach freedom to people across the world that he knows. And he is looking at his history of doing this and he says, I bear the brand marks of Jesus on my body. He is speaking about what can be seen. We have to look deeper and remember that, yes, with those brand marks in place there is also a heart which is overflowing and again saying I am here to give comfort to God's people.