Brothers and sisters:
You are no longer strangers and sojourners,
Our modern world has the tendency to make us feel isolated and alone, as though we are strangers to one another, each making his way on a different journey to and different, ambiguous, and probably unknowable end. But really, we are not, because:
you are fellow citizens with the holy ones
and members of the household of God
What is the foundation of this claim? What is the source of this stability, the solid ground of this unity? It is:
built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.
And so in our Gospel we can understand why the calling of the Twelve was so important that Jesus spent the preceding night in prayer to God. He was initiating the reuniting of the twelve tribes of Israel, but not for themselves alone, but to be a blessing to all nations just as God promised Abraham.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles
The Church is founded on the Apostles Jesus himself chose and called. After he ascended into heaven they went to the ends of the earth to spread his message, fulfilling the words of the Psalm:
Their message goes out through all the earth.
In choosing the Twelve Jesus was also choosing those who would accept their teaching, saying, "The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me" (see Luke 10:16).
There was a moral component to the message of the teaching of Jesus, and what we might call a social justice component, but to view these things in isolation was to miss the main point, which was "Jesus himself as the capstone". The main point of the message was and remains Jesus himself, "the same yesterday and today and forever" (see Hebrews 13:8). Without Jesus even efforts toward good things fall apart and dissipate back into nothingness. But in him the "whole structure is held together". Apart from Jesus we experience the inevitable futility of every human effort, tending toward entropy and death. But everyone who is in Christ Jesus "grows into a temple sacred in the Lord".
Do we feel alone and isolated? Then let us hear again that we are chosen by Jesus himself, and by the Father "who chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight" (see Ephesians 1:4). The world would have us unite around political parties, sports teams, and other shared interests. But the truest unity is found when we allow God himself to do the joining, building us "together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit".
Our role in the Church of the Apostles is not the same as the Apostles or their successors (as probably there are no bishops reading this). But nevertheless we too are 'sent ones', perhaps not sent to the ends of the earth, but to the far corners of our lives, corners that would otherwise perhaps not be reached. We see electric scooters and other such things described as solving the 'last mile problem' of public transportation, reaching the otherwise unreachable peripheries. This is absolutely what we must become for the project of the evangelization of the world. We must solve the last mile problem of the Church, reaching those who will never have any contact with the clergy or the class of professional missionaries. But our leverage to do this and be effective requires being united to the Church, and to Christ, who is its head.
Through all the earth their voice resounds,
and to the ends of the world, their message.
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