In Old Testament times, God established a covenant with the Israelites, making them his chosen people. He offered then protection and support, in exchange for their loyalty and fidelity to him. The goal of this special relationship was that the Israelites would become an example for the whole world of being in right relationship with God. They were to be a light to the nations, and through their example, the other nations would come to worship God as well.
God also offered the Israelites the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, where they could build their society. As they entered Canaan, the land was divided among eleven of the twelve tribes of Israel. One tribe, the Levites, did not get land, because they became the priestly tribe, whose inheritance was the Lord himself. However, the possession of the land was contingent on fidelity to the Lord.
For centuries, the Israelites proved unfaithful to God by worshipping the false gods of the surrounding nations, performing horrific rituals, such as offering their own children in human sacrifice. God punished the Israelites in many ways, and in the end, he took the land from them, forcing them into exile in Babylon. After 70 years, God allowed the Israelites to return. He let them rebuild the temple and the city of Jerusalem. But the Israelites were not able to establish political autonomy again. They were ruled by successive occupiers - the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans.
But God promised them a Savior, the Messiah, who would liberate them. The Israelites assumed that their liberation would be political. They envisioned the Messiah as a great military king, who would physically overthrow their oppressors and would make Israel into a mighty kingdom, ruling over the other nations. But when the Messiah came, he was a very different Savior.
The word Messiah means the Anointed One. In Greek, the word is Christos, that is to say Christ. The long awaited Messiah was Jesus Christ himself. He wasn't just a great man who would perform impressive deeds. Jesus is God himself, who became incarnate, taking on our human nature, without in any way losing his divinity. He came not to liberate the Israelites from the bondage of political oppression, but to liberate all of humanity from the bondage of sin.
He took all the sins of humanity upon himself and suffered the punishment for all human sin through his sacrifice upon the Cross. Christ established the New Covenant in order for us to experience his salvation. We enter into the New Covenant by being baptized into Christ, and we stay in the covenant relationship by living out the life of the Church that Christ established, the Catholic Church.
In the Gospel reading for today, we see that Christ selected twelve men to be twelve Apostles, who would then become the first leaders of the Church. At first the Apostles are sent to the nation of Israel to proclaim the Good News of salvation to them. But the message of salvation is not limited to the Israelites. The twelve leaders of the New Covenant show the transition from the twelve tribes of the Old Covenant. The Israelites are invited into the New Covenant first, but after that, the invitation is opened up to all the nations of the world. We see this progression in the New Testament, as the disciples start to evangelize in the Jewish community, and then begin to preach the Gospels to the Gentiles as well.
Since the New Covenant is not about military liberation from political oppression, the focus of the New Covenant is no longer the Promised Land, the physical land of the Israelites. Instead, the focus is on the new Promised Land, the New Jerusalem, which is Heaven itself. The goal of our lives is to accept the salvation of Christ and to proclaim his Good News to all the world.
This Sunday, we observe the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time. After the seasons of Lent and Eastertide, and the special feasts of Pentecost, Holy Trinity Sunday, and Corpus Christi, we are now in a long stretch of Ordinary Time through the summer and the fall, all the way to Advent. But, as mentioned before, the phrase "Ordinary Time" can easily be misconstrued in English. The phrase does not mean plain, old ordinary. Instead, the phrase means that the Sundays are named after the ordinals, as in second, third, fourth, etc.
There is nothing ordinary in the plain old sense about this time. Throughout this period we are still constantly being invited into the extraordinary grace that Christ has given us. As St. Paul says in the Second Reading for this Sunday: "But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath. Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life." (Romans 5:8-10)
Let us focus during these weeks of Ordinary Time on God's extraordinary love for us. He created us out of love to share his love for us. When we went astray, he did not leave us to the darkness we ourselves created but came among us as one of us and died upon the Cross for our sins. He now offers us complete freedom from our sins if we accept his love and live a life of loving him in return. Let us say yes to his love and be channels of his love to everyone in our lives.
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The readings for Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A are:
Exodus 19:2-6a
Psalm 100:1-2, 3, 5
Romans 5:6-11
Matthew 9:36—10:8
The full text can be found at the USCCB website.
Image Credit: The Crucifixion, Italian, c. 1320, from Wikipedia Commons.
