One Minute Reflection – 11 June – ‘How could we not preach the gospel…?’

One Minute Reflection – 11 June -“Month of the Sacred Heart” – Thursday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year A, Readings: Acts: 11:21b-26; 12:1-3, Psalm 98(97),1.2-3ab.3cd-4.5-6, Matthew 10:7-13 and the Memorial of St Barnabas, Apostle of Christ

Jesus said to his Apostles: “As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” ... Matthew 10:7-8

REFLECTION – “It is not we who look for an apostolate – it looks for us; God, in loving us first, makes apostles of us.   How could we share bread, a roof, our heart with the neighbour who is our own flesh and not be overflowing with the love of our God for him, if that neighbour does not know him?   Everything is miserable without God;  we cannot tolerate wretchedness for someone we love, least of all the greatest. Not be apostolic?   Not be missionaries?   But then what would it mean to belong to this God who has sent His Son so that the world might be saved by Him… and how?

However, we don’t “think” about being apostles;  we think of being – in God’s hands, in the body of Christ, under the moving of His Spirit – the Christ we wish to become, the Christ who is never love without being light and there is no light except at the price of light.   We imitate Him, badly but without stopping, we enter into Him, dissimilarly but tenaciously, how could we not be, at least in will, apostles? in all our being, disposed as, missionaries?…

How could we not preach the gospel if the Gospel is under our skin, in our hands, our hearts, our heads?   We are obliged to say why we try to be what we want to be, why we try not to be what we don’t want to be, we are obliged to preach, since preaching is to say something publicly about Jesus Christ, our Lord and God and one can’t love Him and be silent.” … Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl (1904-1964) – Missionary to the outcasts – A vocation for God among men (The Joy of Believing)

PRAYER – O God, who decreed that Saint Barnabas, a man filled with faith and the Holy Spirit, should be set apart to convert the nations, grant that the Gospel of Christ, which he strenuously preached, may be faithfully proclaimed by word and by deed.   We pray you Lord, that by the intercession of St Barnabas, we too may grow in faith and love and live to glorify Your kingdom.   Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.