Daily Gospel Reflection
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September 30, 2021
Jesus appointed seventy-two other disciples
whom he sent ahead of him in pairs
to every town and place he intended to visit.
He said to them,
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
Go on your way;
behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals;
and greet no one along the way.
Into whatever house you enter, first say,
‘Peace to this household.’
If a peaceful person lives there,
your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you.
Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you,
for the laborer deserves his payment.
Do not move about from one house to another.
Whatever town you enter and they welcome you,
eat what is set before you,
cure the sick in it and say to them,
‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’
Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you,
go out into the streets and say,
‘The dust of your town that clings to our feet,
even that we shake off against you.’
Yet know this: the Kingdom of God is at hand.
I tell you,
it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town.”
The story of Jesus appointing seventy-two disciples as workers for the abundant harvest reminds us to find joy in our labor. Jesus warns his disciples that he is sending them out like lambs among the wolves, but Jesus is right behind them!
We are never alone in our labor when we align our efforts with all who strive to introduce Christ’s message of peace. Our challenge is to follow the example of the seventy-two and return to Christ “with joy.”
It is not only in this passage that Luke focuses on joy. He weaves this theme throughout his Gospel. John the Baptist leaps for joy from Elizabeth’s womb in the presence of the incarnate Word. The shepherd who finds the lost sheep and the father who welcomes his prodigal son home rejoice. The disciples meet the risen Christ with joy. Christ’s inbreaking to our world, his birth, his miracles, and his appointing of the disciples are also reasons to rejoice. Joy—even if one feels like a lamb amid wolves—becomes the marker of a Christian.
Christ teaches us not to take our worldly goods with us on the road. He wants us to be detached and abandon the baggage that prevents us from doing our work with joy because true joy comes from where the world’s needs and our talents intersect. Nothing more.
Whatever we do, let us offer that work to Christ, the source of our joy and life.
Prayer
Dear Lord, we have so many responsibilities and commitments to honor today. Through all of this, we ask that your Spirit remind us again and again about what really matters. Let your peace be ours. Let your joy fill us. Help us to be attentive to the concerns and the celebrations of others. Fill us with gratitude and with the grace to live in the moment. Amen.
Saint of the Day
A doctor of the church, Jerome was born 342 in what is now northeastern Italy. His father provided him with a good education, sending him to Rome to learn from the best teachers. His teachers were not Christian, however, and Jerome began to fall into habits of decadence that were the order of the day in Rome.
With friends, however, he would visit the tombs of the martyrs and apostles in church crypts or catacombs. Soon, Jerome was moved to devote his life to God.
In 374, Jerome settled in Antioch, the premier Christian city of Asia Minor. Jerome fell ill and had a delirious vision in which he stood before Christ in judgment and fell short because he had put rhetoric and study before faithfulness.
The experience touched him deeply, and he decided to retreat to live in the desert to seek holiness—he spent four years alone, focusing on prayer and fighting temptation with fasting, all the while suffering from poor health. His time in the desert focused his will and fired his passion for faithfulness, inspiring his eventual return to the city.
To distract his fiery will from temptation, Jerome dedicated himself to learning Hebrew from a fellow monk who had converted from Judaism. He found the Semitic language challenging, but he set his sharp mind to the task and persevered.
When he returned to Antioch, Jerome was ordained a priest, but felt drawn to the monastic life. He went to Constantinople to study Scripture under the great St. Gregory of Nazianzen. Later, he journeyed to Rome to attend a church council and was retained there by Pope Damasus I to be his secretary. At the pope’s request, Jerome retranslated and corrected the Latin version of the Greek Gospels, which had a number of errors in their transcription through the years.
Jerome possessed razor-sharp wits and often used pointed sarcasm to direct criticism at non-believers and other Christians with slack faith. “I never spared heretics and have always done my utmost that the enemies of the Church should also be my enemies,” he wrote.
Those who disliked him gossiped about him profusely, so Jerome decided to depart Rome for Palestine. He lived in a stone cave and opened a free school and hospice outside Jerusalem, near Bethlehem.
He continued to correspond with Church leaders, including St. Augustine, about certain heresies or distortions of the faith, quick to point out where error was present. Jerome's quick temper and salty tongue were only matched by his quickly converted heart. He is often depicted striking his breast with a stone (as in the statue here, from Dillon Hall) because he was as quick to repent as he was to convict.
He is known best for his work translating Scripture—the Church recognizes him as a great doctor of the church for his work translating not only the Gospels, but the entire Greek New Testament into Latin. Jerome translated both the Christian Scriptures and the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures—into what was the vernacular language of his day—Latin—thus his translation became known as the Latin Vulgate.
When Rome fell in 410, the wealthy elite that had slandered him were scattered. Many wandered through the Holy Land as beggars. Jerome interrupted his study and translation work to attend to their needs. “Today we must translate the words of the Scriptures into deeds,” he wrote. “Instead of speaking saintly words we must act them.”
Jerome died on this date in 420, and some of his relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica. He is depicted in stained glass windows in the Basilica as well, including one pane that shows him with a lion that represents his time as a desert hermit, as well as his fierce defense of the faith.
Jerome argued forcefully in support of the intercession of the saints who have died. He once wrote: “If the apostles and martyrs while still living upon earth can pray for other men, how much more may they do so after their victories? Have they less power now that they are with Jesus Christ?”
St. Jerome, the sarcastic holy hermit who defended the faith and diligently translated the words of Scripture—pray for us!