Ah Matthew! To truly understand and appreciate today’s Gospel we need to remember that Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience, probably in Antioch. Hence the Gospel writer has Jesus instruct the disciples that they are not to take a road that might lead to a gentile community nor go into a Samaritan town. The mission of the twelve is very simple and very clear, they are to go to the ‘lost sheep’ of the House of Israel and they are to announce that the Kingdom of God is very near.

One of the key themes in the Gospels is this consistent view taken by Jesus that the Jewish religious authorities had got it wrong, they were lost. For so many among the Pharisee and Sadducees, the temple was an end in itself. The focus was on obedience to the letter of the law. The list of those excluded from the temple and the life of the community appeared to be endless.

Into this maelstrom Jesus steps. He, and we, are to be ‘good news’. We are to go to the lost ones, we are to embrace those alienated, we are to lift the unjust burdens placed upon people’s shoulders and we are to constantly fall in love with an intimate Abba Father God who calls us by name and like a shepherd, lifts us gently up onto shoulders when we fall or fail.

By Br Damien Price cfc