Monday, 15^th week in ordinary time – 13^th July 2026 – Matthew 10:34-11:1

We come to the end of the second of five discourses found in the Gospel of Matthew. The mission discourse ends with no apology. It is not a diplomatic speech that has carefully tip toed safely past a minefield of difficult issues. In the mission discourse, Jesus had delivered a battle brief, not a business pitch.

The mission discourse has been more like a bull taken on by its horns or the elephant in the room addressed! Jesus hands his followers their crosses, warns them of intense persecution, and addresses the polarizing reality of his kingdom head-on. True leadership warns of the scars before promising the crown.

The mission discourse makes it abundantly clear that the Christian will always be to the world, a point of derision, an object of scorn. This is not merely from those who sit outside our green pastures but also include some ‘goats’ who mock the sheep within.

Making a choice for Christ clearly sets you on a collision course with the rest of the world and the world does not have to be on the other side of the globe but can be on the other side of your home. For the early Church, this domestic fracture was the first step on a road that often led to literal martyrdom. Rejecting the pagan family deities was viewed as a betrayal of both home and state, turning loved ones into informants.

Those in the early Church who followed Christ, leaving their pagan faiths, were the ones who did not just feel some heat under the collar; many felt the heat literally as they were burnt for Nero’s pleasure. The early saints did not risk social awkwardness; they risked becoming literal torches for Nero’s garden.

Jesus is emphatic; luke-warm Christians who have been bathing in their watered down understanding of the Catholic faith are “not worthy of him.” While we may propagate and promote our happy-clappy, kumbaya version of Christ, that version, good as it may be, must also be confronted with verse 38 where we are told that if Christ is not first in everything, then we stand nowhere in his court; we are not worthy of him. A watered-down faith does not dilute the truth; it completely invalidates it.

Christ completely dismantles the modern illusion of a risk-free, low-cost discipleship. He demands total supremacy in the human heart, refusing to be treated as a secondary lifestyle accessory or a comfortable weekend insurance policy.

While Christ did not ask us to actively seek persecutors so that we may be martyred, he actively asks us to die to ourselves in order that we may find him. He says “those who find THEIR life will lose it.” What Christ is saying is that those who make a life for themselves in which HE is not part of, that life is a life created for themselves, a life devoid of him. That life, as happy as it may seem to the world, is a life lost. Such a life is lived in quiet rebellion against God. You don’t have to curse Christ to reject Him; you just have to build a life without Him.

The mission discourse winds down with some respite for the ones sent out. So far, most of the discourse seems to border on not just the straight and narrow but the harrowing and challenging. So, Christ encourages us to promote and support the work of the evangelist.

By welcoming the missionary, you welcome Christ. That welcome may be just a cup of cold water that you can afford but each of us can afford to fund the mission and life of the Church. You don’t have to cross an ocean to advance the Gospel; you just have to being by opening your door.

A cup of cold water was the cheapest, most basic element of hospitality in the ancient Near East, yet Jesus attaches an eternal reward to it. This teaches us that supporting the priesthood, religious vocations, and parish missions is not a passive charity; it is an active, mystical participation in the work of Christ Himself. If your feet cannot carry the message across borders, your resources must carry the messenger.

The Gospel of today ends with the doctrine we all advocate but fail short of; to practice what we preach. Jesus did exactly that! Having “instructed the twelve he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities” till he walked to Jerusalem, walked up the steps of the Praetorium and then with a cross on his back, walked all the way up to Golgotha. Christ did not write a textbook on suffering; He became the living blueprint for it.

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