Reflection: Mk 16:15-20

“Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

The gospel reading for this Sunday starts with Jesus sending his disciples into the world. Jesus commissioned his disciples to go out into the “whole” world and proclaim the Gospel to all creatures, not just human creatures. He also tells them not preach and teach, but also be “signs.” The disciples will have the ability to drive out demons and speak in many languages! They will also be able to heal the people who are ill!

Jesus also called us to continue his mission and ministry. We are to teach! We are to preach! And most importantly, we are to live as Jesus lived! We are to love as deeply as Jesus loved! And we are to share the wealth of our gifts, talents and abundance as Jesus did.

We, too, are asked to proclaim the Kingdom of God just like the disciples, who was strengthened by the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul tells us in Romans 5.5, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”  We are Christ’s witnesses today in our homes with our families, in our neighbors, in our parish, in our community and in the place where we are present.  We are called and challenged by Christ not only to hear the good news of the gospel, but to do whatever we can to share it with others we meet. We do this through the quality of our daily lives in how we speak to each other and treat each other. As St. Francis of Assisi reminds us, “we must use every means possible to proclaim the gospel and if we have to, we will have to use words.”

Our mission as his followers in the midst and in the depths of the world, He wants his love and message be inserted in the center of the world, the city, the neighborhood-in the church. Pope Francis is calling us today to obey the Lord’s command given to us 2,000 years ago. We have to work out together in how to share the Good News. We cannot bury or hoard the gift we have been given, because everyone needs to hear the good news that they are loved. We are to be ‘the good news in the present tense’.

The earth may belong to us, but we must not belong to it: we must not be possessed by worldly cares. With Pope Francis, we pray that Jesus “may free us from being Christians without hope, who live as if the Lord was not risen, as if our problems were the center of our lives.”

God is determined to bring us all into the final community of love which is gathering day by day.  So, let us be brave with courage and enthusiasm, with much passion to do the command of Jesus to us as His chosen, to ‘Go!’ And let us find creative ways to be good news to those around us; to help us to be inclusive in our love for others, that is, to open our narrow hearts to include those who have injured us or differed from us in so many ways. Don’t let us indulge feelings of superiority in relation to anyone.

Our Lady of Virtues community

Pangantucan, Bukidnon