Daily Gospel Reflection
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July 12, 2023
Jesus summoned his Twelve disciples
and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out
and to cure every disease and every illness.
The names of the Twelve Apostles are these:
first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew;
James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John;
Philip and Bartholomew,
Thomas and Matthew the tax collector;
James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus;
Simon the Cananean, and Judas Iscariot
who betrayed Jesus.
Jesus sent out these Twelve after instructing them thus,
“Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town.
Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”
If I were one of the Twelve disciples and had just been given super-human powers by the Son of God, I would be ready to be sent to the farthest corners of the earth! I may even desire to go into treacherous, remote places to preach the good news and do great things in God’s name. And yet, Jesus asks his apostles to stay near.
Though he would later instruct them to go and make disciples of every nation, this first commission is to seek the lost sheep among those in the house of Israel. They are sent to tend to the needs of ordinary, hurting people who they would meet in their everyday lives; ordinary people just like them before they had received Christ’s life-changing call.
This mission seems simple, but then I find when applied in my own life, it is more challenging than I ever imagined.
When I was a student at Notre Dame, I spent my summers mentoring Catholic youth from around the world and even got to live and teach at a Catholic school in rural Tanzania. Saying yes to these big commitments was easy, but when little opportunities arose to show God’s love to those in my dorm, strangers in the dining hall, or those I passed on the streets of South Bend, it became much more difficult.
Why? It is far less glamorous to be God’s love to others in these little, mundane moments, but that is precisely where we meet the “lost sheep” of our communities.
May we always be God’s love to others, reconciling with the ordinary, outcast people among us, and welcoming them back into the fold.
Prayer
Lord God, every time we read the names of the Twelve disciples, we wonder what it will be like to meet them all some day in heaven. Though we know a little about some of them — Peter denied you three times, Matthew was a tax collector, Judas betrayed you, they were fishermen — we don’t really know them. Some day we will know them. Help us to not be afraid of the truth that each day we are one day closer to our heavenly homeland. And send us out, Lord, to witness to the Kingdom, to preach the Kingdom. May our words and actions be a sign to all the world that your Kingdom is here among us and yet to come. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Saint of the Day

When Jesus was carrying his cross on the way to his death on Golgotha, a woman named Veronica wiped his face with her veil. An image of Jesus’ face is said to have remained on the cloth.
The story of Veronica and her veil is one of the most famous Christian legends. In the early Church, many people were motivated to find and honor relics of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The veil with Jesus’ face was called a vera icon—a true icon, or true image—to distinguish it from other relics, and this is perhaps where Veronica’s name comes from. Stories about this woman arose to fill in the gaps—some have her as the wife of a Roman officer who was moved with compassion to comfort Jesus; others have her as Jesus’ friend, Martha; or the wife of Zaccheus; or the woman who was healed from her bleeding when she touched Jesus’ cloak.
That a woman filled with compassion wiped the face of Jesus on his way to his death could very well have happened, but we know very little else for certain. St. Veronica is depicted in several places on campus, most often as a figure in the stations of the cross, as in this sixth station from the Basilica. She is patron saint of photography.
The veil venerated as the original is in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Blessed Basil Moreau, C.S.C., founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, gave a gift to Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., when he left France to establish a university on the American frontier in northern Indiana: a depiction of the face of Jesus from Veronica’s veil. This image was venerated by the Holy Cross community that lived in the Log Chapel during the first years of Notre Dame, and now stands in the Basilica.
St. Veronica, you were the compassionate woman who comforted Jesus on his way to his death—pray for us!