Take Nothing For The Journey

(By Fr. Dexter Brereton)

This episode in today’s gospel follows last week’s story of Jesus’ rejection by many of the persons of his own hometown. Rather than give in to depression and failure, Jesus responds by taking his message on the road in a big way. He sends out his twelve disciples or apostles (the word “apostle” comes from the Greek word “apostolos” the one who is sent out, or ‘delegate’) in pairs to spread his message.

At the time that Mark wrote this gospel around the year 70 AD these words of Jesus were taken as a teaching to the early Christian community about the need to move quickly, urgently and to be absolutely dependent on God’s care. Jesus instructs them to take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no haversack, no coppers for their purses.

For us today, this passage retains a certain relevance. There is the temptation to feel that in an increasingly complex world, the church can only get her message across to others by using the most modern methods of communications as well as by taking a page out of the most advanced “marketing strategies” available from the world of business.

This is but a partial truth. The Gospel message has its own power. Pope Benedict XVI once famously remarked: “It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows but by attraction.” The Church’s method of evangelization remains fundamentally the same: Proclaim to those around us the marvels of the Lord – say to your neighbours “this is what Jesus has done for me!” This is perhaps why the phrase from the reading “take nothing for the journey” is such a powerful one. We take nothing for the journey because we already have all that we need.

What we have, what we need is nothing less than our encounter with the living God. Pope Francis reminds us that this encounter with God’s love blossoms into a friendship which transforms us. Through it we are “liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption.” This friendship with God brings us the peace which comes with the forgiveness of sin, the beginning of a new life, the beginning of real hope. No human being is immune from this deep need for reconciliation – with themselves, with God, with other people and with nature. As Pope Francis says: “Everyone needs to be touched by the comfort and attraction of God’s saving love which is mysteriously at work in each person above and beyond their faults and failings.” (Evangelii Gaudium, 44)