Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those whom he wanted
and they came to him.
Jesus was like a new Moses or a new Solomon, summoning these Twelve in order to be the foundations of a new and spiritual Israel. They were not merely representatives of the twelve tribes, since membership in God's covenant community was now going to transcend the tribal and the national. The Israel of the Old Covenant had been specially chosen and blessed with favor in order to be a light to the nations. It is important to recognize that it was not chosen based on any particular merit.
It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples (see Deuteronomy 7:7).
Neither did he choose the Blessed Virgin on the basis of some accomplishments of hers. Neither did he summon the Twelve for their particular skills or competencies.
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; (see First Corinthians 1:25-27).
God was pleased to make sure that his own power was evident, working through human weakness. Thus, those who recognized it knew they were not being taken in by merely human creativity or cleverness. They were not being persuaded by savvy business sense. From the outside, the Church seldom looked very impressive, was always replete with very human flaws and failings. And yet there was something within the Church that had the power to transform lives. There was something protecting the Church in order that the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles would remain available to all throughout the generations. The foundations chosen by Jesus were entirely natural. He wouldn't have needed to look far to find more educated or erudite men to carry his message to the world. But from the Twelve he did choose he established a supernatural edifice against which even the gates of hell could not prevail.
The key thing for Apostles to be successful was that they remember why they were called, "that they might be with him and he might send them forth to preach and to have authority to drive out demons". They had to remember that he was the source of their ability to be effective in spreading the Gospel, he the vine, and they the branches. They had to prioritize his word above their own words and seek to impart the spiritual freedom that he longed to give. They had received the authority of Jesus himself, but not in order to use it for their own projects. The authority of Jesus was always for the sake of service, always meant to be ordered to salvation.
Look here at this end of your mantle which I hold.
Since I cut off an end of your mantle and did not kill you,
see and be convinced that I plan no harm and no rebellion.
Since those anointed by God represent more than they are in themselves it behooves us to demonstrate respect and even reverence toward them. This doesn't mean we look away from grievous failures or turn a blind eye to criminal behavior. But it does mean, at least, that we don't allow the fact the ministers within God's Church are human to bother us excessively. They are human. They do have faults. They are not perfect. But they are the Lord's anointed, and divine power works through them, such that, without them, we would be, at best, deeply impoverished. We have to trust that the Lord is still able to work through human weakness, even when they weakness is lamentably familiar. After all, if he can no longer do so, what hope do we have that he can work through us? Our hope is the fact that we too have been called and chosen and anointed. This divine election really can allow us to transcend our very real limits, that all our faults and failures might not prevent us from living our lives for the glory of God.
Bernadette Farrell - God Has Chosen Me
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