Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 447

Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. Accompanying him were the Twelve, and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities....

Today's gospel describes a church on the move, as Jesus led his disciples, a group of apostles and women healed of infirmities and evil spirits. The men seem randomly selected; their only common traits are they are all Jews, chosen by the Lord rather than self-selected, and willing. The women are perhaps more select, as they were all healed by the Lord's mercy. 

Like the Lord who was born in Bethlehem, fled to Egypt, and raised in Nazareth, the group has no abiding home. They model the invitation of the Letter to the Hebrews: 

Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach that he bore. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come.

If they seem like an odd society, and strange to our way of thinking, we can surely recognize the reproach they bore with him: they were homeless. The apostles and women had left their homes, families, neighborhoods, and careers to follow Jesus. 

Someday historians might remember the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as the Age of Homelessness. Billions of people are fleeing crime, genocide, religious persecution, war, drought, rising seas, and unbearable heat. Neither natural boundaries like oceans and mountains, nor hi-tech walls, nor weapons of mass destruction can prevent their movement. Political parties might protest while governments pretend to address the problem but its scope is far beyond anyone's management. 

Bible readers should not be unfamiliar with migration. The names of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph evoke a founding story of migration. Moses led a migratory escape from Egypt, through the wilderness, and into the "Promised Land," a land which was not unoccupied. Centuries later, their descendants fled or were transported from Jerusalem in the fifth century before Christ. Only a remnant, as Isaiah had prophesied, returned to Jerusalem. The majority of God's people would never again be located in a single geographical place in this world. 

But they never forget the promise of the Lord: 

On that day...

A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob,
to the mighty God.
Though your people, O Israel,
were like the sand of the sea,
Only a remnant of them will return;
their destruction is decreed,
as overflowing justice demands. (Is 10:20-22)

Saint Luke describes that surviving remnant as they lean on the Lord in today's gospel. But they are not really homeless; their home is the heart of Jesus. 

Nor were they as homeless as the millions who own a house but feel nonetheless abandoned, rootless, confused, and lost in this world. If their bodies seem anchored in one place, their hearts float like released balloons, or like Didi and Gogo in Samuel Becket's Waiting for Godot. They haunt cities and neighborhoods but live nowhere. 

The Catholic Church provides a spiritual home for billions of migrants. It may be experienced as the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It comes with a knowledge of time and place. I know where I am, and where I am going, and to whom I belong. Even in those dark moments when we feel abandoned and lost, we rely on men and women who hold us and keep us among the faithful. 

Given what we see happening all around us, we must hear and heed the invitation of the Lord who promises, 

Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light. Matt 11:28-30