Jul 6th, 2025: 14th Sunday YT OC
Today’s Gospel describes a vivid and rather surprising picture: seventy-two disciples are sent out by Jesus with no walking stick, no bag, no sandals, and strict instructions not even to greet anyone along the way. If that sounds odd to us, it would have sounded utterly insane to the first-century hearer. No staff meant no defense. No bag meant no provisions. No sandals meant exposed feet on rocky roads. In a dangerous world, these disciples went out utterly unarmed—except for one thing: they carried peace.
“Whatever house you enter, say first, ‘Peace to this house.’” This wasn’t just a polite greeting. It was a prophetic proclamation. Jesus sends them out as bearers of peace, as visible signs of God’s reign already arriving. Like lambs among wolves, they carried nothing but trust in the One who sent them. They marched not to conquer, but to bless. Not to accumulate, but to give. Not to impress, but to embody the message: the kingdom of God has come near to you.
Why send them out this way? Because Jesus is not just interested in getting a message out—he’s forming messengers. And the method is the message.
The disciples’ very vulnerability becomes part of their proclamation. Their lightness becomes their strength. They are not self-reliant adventurers. They are dependent ones—dependent on God, on strangers, on grace. That’s the mystery: God chooses to reach the world not through power, but through weakness; not through grandiosity, but through simplicity.
Luke’s use of the number seventy-two (or seventy, depending on your translation) is also no accident. As Genesis 10 recounts the seventy (or seventy-two) nations of the world, Luke hints that this mission is no longer limited to Israel. It is the mission of the Church to the whole world, to every culture and people. And we are the inheritors of that mission.
But here’s the challenge. Most of us live settled lives. We’re not wandering barefoot into strange towns. We have jobs, mortgages, insurance, and smartphones. What does it mean, then, to be sent today? Perhaps it means this: that even as settled Christians, we must travel light. Not just physically, but spiritually. We are to hold lightly to the securities that insulate us from faith. We are to resist the urge to hoard comfort and control.
We are to move through this world not merely as consumers or commentators, but as witnesses—men and women whose lives quietly ask the world: “What do you trust? What do you serve? What gives you peace?”
And when we offer peace, let it be the kind Jesus spoke of: not a superficial politeness, but a deep inner stillness that flows from knowing we are loved, held, and sent by God. This is not a peace we generate. It is a peace we receive. “Do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you,” Jesus says. “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” That is our deepest identity—not what we accomplish, but who we belong to.
As Pope John Paul once reminded us, echoing Isaiah, God is not only Father—He is like a mother who comforts her child. If God is the one who carries us in her arms and cradles us in her lap, then why do we carry so much?
Let us ask today: What might we need to leave behind in order to carry peace? What attachments, anxieties, or self-reliances weigh us down? And more importantly, how might we live in such a way that others can glimpse the God who walks with us, feeds us, and sends us?
May we be among the few laborers who, though imperfect, trust enough to be sent with nothing but the peace of Christ in our hearts.