14th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 6 July 2025
One of the interesting things we have discovered about the famous walk of the Camino de Santiago was that the route of pilgrimage, itself, predates the journey St. James, himself, took in the 1st century. Scholars now think that St. James went to the region of Compostella because he knew of an existing route of pilgrimage there and thought that because the route already represented people searching for something those on the way may be opened to his message of the Good News. In fact, in the ancient world, before St. James, the destination was a place on the Spanish coast, a place that is now marked as Fisterra, some 80kms west of Compostella. For the ancient people this spot on the Spanish coast was literally the end of the earth, the place at which the earth came to its end. For them, therefore, it was endowed with a certain sacred quality. And so, when Jesus sends forth the apostles to preach the Good News “to the ends of the earth,” St. James actually took this to heart and made his journey to the end of the earth as it was then understood.
This commission to preach the Good News to the far ends of the earth that lies as the foundation of the Camino de Santiago is further underscored by today’s gospel. Seventy-two disciples are commissioned. Why 72 we might ask? Because in the context of the first century, it was regarded that there were 72 nations in the world. Jesus is, therefore, sending his disciples out across the entire world. In other words, no part of the world is not to be engaged.
Now that the world has become a much smaller place with every part of the globe accessible, the universality of the Christian message might be understood, not only geographically, but also socially. This is what the late Pope Francis understood as what must drive our vision as Christians. “The Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery.” Where are the margins – the places where people or groups feel excluded by their societies because of their context whether it be by the force of history, or politics, or because of their race, their age, their ability. This Sunday which is in the National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee week, having its origins as far back as the 1938 Day of Mourning, we are particularly conscious of our aboriginal citizens in their history of exclusion, and what we have to learn from them about the nature of this land in which we live. These are the places with which we should be particularly concerned as followers of Jesus. They occupy our attention. They are the new “ends of the earth” to which we are sent.
But if we are to go to the existential peripheries to bring the Good News, the question arises as to how we are to do this. As the gospel today indicates we are to do this now, we are to do it without purse, haversack or sandals. That is, we are to do it with great simplicity. It is essentially our own person which instructs others about Jesus. In this, there is also another quality we are invited to bring to our style of instruction. It seems evident that when we come to form people, to educate them or instruct them, good instructions are not enough. We must also be attentive to the style that we use.
It reminds me of the story of when a man began to give large doses of cod liver oil to his Doberman because he had been told the stuff was good for dogs. Each day he would hold the head of the protesting dog between his knees, force its jaws open, and pour the liquid down its throat. One day the dog broke loose and the oil spilled on the floor. Then, to the man’s great surprise the dog returned to lick the spoon. And so the man discovered that what the dog had been fighting was not the oil but the method of administration. So, the style we use when it comes to instructing others or helping them is not insignificant. It is very important.
People accept us or they don’t. If they do, we stay. If they don’t we move on. Sometimes, we get locked into thinking that it is our responsibility to change people. But it is not our responsibility. We have only the responsibility to change ourselves, not others. As the cliché rightly says the change we want to bring about in the world begins with making the change in ourselves. The most we can do with others is to say it as it is for us, and allow them the freedom to respond in their own way. And they will be attracted not so much by what we way, but by who we are. We need always to respect the otherness of people – that they are other than ourselves, and even if we intuit what might be best for them, their freedom to respond must always be respected. They do not have to be like us, no matter how much we want them to be. No one was every changed by word, by argument. People are changed by the relationships of care we have with them. As I heard once, very wisely, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
So let us pray that our instruction of others in the way of Jesus does not result with the same effect was we hear in the story of the enthusiastic young priest who was appointed chaplain of a hospital. He was, one day, glancing through the admission cards of recently arrived patients and found one which stated that the patient was Catholic. But there was also a curious note affixed to the card: “Does not want to see a priest unless she is unconscious.” May our presence to others not result in the same aspiration.
