“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature, looking at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.  For previous Green Room entries, click here.

This morning’s Gospel reading is Matthew 28:16-20:

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they all saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Another travel Sunday, another Lite Reflection. My apologies, but my schedule yesterday did not allow me to spend much time in contemplation for today’s reflection, and morning started off at 4 AM ET to get ready for a flight back home.

In a weird way, though, that relates in some small way to today’s readings. Consider both the first reading, from Deuteronomy 4 as well as the Gospel today in terms of what it meant for the scope of God’s will for His people. In this exhortation from Moses to the liberated Israelites, he reminds them of the divine intervention that freed them from Egypt and sent them on their mission to the promised land.

Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, with strong hand and outstretched arm, and by great terrors, all of which the LORD, your God, did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? This is why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the LORD is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.

By this time in their journey, the Israelites had become ungrateful and balky at the long trek through the desert — forty years’ worth, in the end. They rebelled, incurred punishment from God, and then repented and received His mercy. But they endured on that trek to reach and secure the promised land of Israel, and did His will in establishing a place where Israel at least had the opportunity to be priests to all nations. In the end, they failed in that task, but Moses reminds them here of that call, that commission, to do His will and prosper.

Rather than call people to Jerusalem, Jesus in effect will send Jerusalem out to the people through the Church which He founded. The pilgrim path is reversed; the Apostles and their converts will encompass the globe eventually, and manage to reach the hearts of the Western and some Eastern nations within a single generation. Peter and Paul will be martyred in Rome; others go into Asia to proclaim the Gospel.

Since I was traveling today, and griping about the hour and the effort to myself a bit, I began to consider what this Great Commission meant for the Apostles. Plenty of people dislike travel, or at least the actual physical tasks of traveling, but it’s safer than it has ever been for humanity in most places. Trade routes are relatively secure, and tourism usually means everyone has a stake in making travelers feel safe and welcome, in most places. Go off the beaten paths even in relatively friendly places, though, and travelers can make people nervous or even resentful.

In the days of the Apostles and the early Church, the latter was the norm. Trade routes were notoriously dangerous, and small communities viewed those from other places with at least some wariness. If the twelve Apostles were to set out today on an evangelical mission throughout the world to tell people that their belief systems were wrong and that they had the path to eternal life and salvation, they wouldn’t get a friendly reception for long, not even in the more enlightened areas. Imagine what that meant for them two thousand years ago, day in, day out, traveling in and around the empires of the day.

That’s assuming they got there in the first place. In Acts, we get a glimpse of the dangers of travel in Paul’s journey to Rome. We hear little about the other Apostles and their travails, but it seems impossible that those journeys went smoothly for them.

So much for petty griping about an early wake-up call!

What’s more, these simple but faithful men would have known what that kind of travel meant — its dangers, the resentments (and worse) of the people to whom they would preach, and more. Yet they went, for love of Christ as well as love for their fellow men and women. As Paul put it in Romans 8:14-17 in today’s second reading, they had received the Holy Spirit, and through it “a Spirit of adoption” which allowed them to cry out, “Abba, Father!” They loved these men and women to whom they ministered enough to risk all of that to go out despite the risks, venture beyond the only world they have ever known, in order to win brothers and sisters through the same adoption and salvation.

If they can do that by relying on their faith in Christ, what’s keeping us from doing the same? It certainly can’t be a two-hour layover in Des Moines, figuratively speaking. The Great Commission is a wake-up call for all Christians, and it can never come too early.

The front-page image is of the Christ Pantocrator mosaic in the Pammakaristos Church and museum (Fethiye Camii Mosque) in Istanbul.