Wednesday
Twenty-fifth Week
Ordinary Time
Today's gospel resonates with my very being: Change. Movement. Spiritual journey. Throughout my life, since the summer of 1959 when I started my spiritual journey in a professional, you might say, way. "He sent them to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick."
In a career that has brought me to many different cities, states, even countries, I have encountered so many military families and made fast friends with them. I believe it is that we share a kindred spirit. Joan Blandin Howard, a member of the Christian Spirituality Program at Jesuit Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, recently wrote these words about change, movement and spiritual journey that resulted from Jesus directions to the disciples.
This is not about the 'what' and 'where' of the sending.
It is not about success or failure.
It is about the journey itself....
It is about being sent --again and again.
It is about freedom from success or failure,
people places and fears....
It is about inner movement, inner change, as well as physical relocation.
It is about the relationship
between me and Jesus, me and others.
It is about trusting who I am
in the heart of God
and that what I have been given
is enough for the journey.
Many who read these lines may not have had the moving-changing challenges Mrs. Howard shares. Yet, I also feel confident that you are reading these words, you have experienced or faced the experiences of inner movement, inner change.
Surely there were days, weeks and perhaps months when the spiritual journey demanded much inner travel. The challenge then is the realize and actually believe and trust in God. He is never apart from me even though I might have felt absence.
Perhaps this was the extraordinary gift God entrusted to his disciples whose inner spirit must have been confronted by moments of mission-doubt, loneliness and frustration. Like the apostles on these journeys, when we do trust in God's presence and support, we encounter unusual moments, surprises and almost always a rich treasure of friends who stamp God's approval on our missions!
