XI Sunday of Ordinary Time - - Year A – June 14, 2026
Roman Rite
Ex 19:2-6; Ps 99; Rom 5:6-11; Mt 9:36-10:8
1) Jesus' compassionate gaze.
“Jesus, seeing the crowds, had compassion for them” (Mt 9, 36): Jesus' gaze turns from the physical illnesses of the crowd to its disorientation. He sees “tired and exhausted crowds, like sheep without a shepherd” (Ibid.), therefore in need not only of health, but also of guidance and meaning in life.
“Compassion” is the feeling that drives Jesus to deal with sick and disoriented crowds. Compassion is a feeling that speaks of deep and inner participation. The Greek word refers to the physical place, maternal love, the womb. It is a visceral, stubborn love that almost sees no reason, regardless of any evaluation of merit. Jesus just loves crowds. I would say more: Jesus not only feels compassion for the suffering humanity. Christ is God's compassion for man, for every man and for all man. Indeed, the compassion that God felt for our human condition led Him to become Himself a participant in our human condition and nature. God's compassion for man is that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14a).
Inhabiting among us, the Redeemer feels pain for the pain of the world, the great pain of man. Jesus is compassion, God's weeping made flesh. Crying is loving with your eyes. What He looks at with His eyes full of compassionate tenderness is not only the vast human camp, where He has pitched His tent. Jesus sees a multitude charged with pain and fear. He sees flocks of sheep, lost because they have no shepherds. His response is a pain that takes hold of his insides. And he calls the twelve and entrusts them with these lost and suffering sheep: they will have to preserve them, guard them, save them with compassion, the least sappy of feelings. They must save and sow it in the world, through six actions: preach, heal, resurrect, heal, deliver, and give.
Today's evangelical passage reveals to us the Apostles' call ultimate reason for being, to make the compassion of Jesus present among the crowds. Every man, because of his weariness and exhaustion, needs to see and feel “God's compassion” for him. The apostles exist so that the experience of God's closeness is a real possibility always offered to every man.
The apostle Paul understood this well when he wrote to his Christians in Philippi: “God is my witness to the deep affection I have for all of you in the love of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:8). The affection that the apostle feels for his faithful is not a simply human transport; it is the very transport of Christ. Because it is no longer Paul who lives, but Christ who lives in Paul. The apostle, in his love for the faithful, is no longer moved by his heart but by the very heart of Christ.
For God's compassion towards man to continue to be felt in all times and places, the apostles are endowed with the same power as Jesus “He gave them the power to drive away unclean spirits and to heal all kinds of diseases and infirmities”. Not only that. They are sent to tell man that “the kingdom of heaven is near”. The Apostle therefore has an “informative” task: to notify a fact, that is “the kingdom of heaven is near, and an “effective” power: to make the fact that he notifies happen: “heal the sick, raise the dead, heal the lepers, cast out the demons”.
2) Sending on a mission.
However, in today's Gospel, Jesus sends his Apostles on a mission, saying not to go among the pagans and not to enter the cities of the Samaritans. Expressing himself in this way, it seems that he intends to limit the horizon to the mission. It is certainly a passage that must be understood in the historical situation of the moment. It would seem like a sending that limits the task of evangelization. But that is not entirely the case if you look closely. In fact, at least two elements retain their freshness intact. The first is that we are not simply talking about “the House of Israel”, but about “lost sheep”. The first expression says the limit, but the second says the true nature of evangelical universality, which lies not simply in going anywhere, but in the search for the lost. Jesus himself did not leave the borders of Israel. Mission is not to run anywhere and get everywhere. The essential thing is to mature, even in one place only, those values that have a charge of universality in themselves. The essential thing is to be, wherever you are, a sign of God's love for all, even if it is in the face of one man.
Like that of Jesus, the mission of the disciple is also itinerant: «going». And his task is indicated by five strong indications: the first is concerned with the task of the service of the Word (preaching), the other four concern the liberation of man from his sufferings (healing, resurrecting, cleansing, casting out demons). Then Christ no longer describes the tasks to be done, but how these tasks are to be performed: “Freely you have received, freely give”. The Greek expression says the most absolute gratuitousness. Jesus never took anything, so must his disciple. Not only, nothing must asked for, but neither is the dignity of the patient or the usefulness of his recovery looked at. This gratuitousness is the essential characteristic of God's saving action.
The mission, which flows from Crist's compassionate heart, is to preach and heal life, or at least cure it by relieving suffering. All this must be done to evangelize by proclaiming with words and actions that God cares for every human being. God is near each of us with love. Perhaps we will expect a more decisive response to the pain of the crowds, a more efficient relief: why does the Lord help the fragility of man with the fragility of other men, rather than with his omnipotence? Because He intervenes for his children, through his other children. Jesus' response to the suffering of the world is each of us, called to be his hands that soothe human wounds.
An example of people working with piety are the consecrated Virgins. These women show us how one can be, in the timelessness of daily life, reaper of suffering to bring the relief fervently desired with hands that support and caress, with words that caress the heart.
Following the invitation of Christ and the example of these consecrated souls, who drank at the loving Source of life, let us we freely give what gratuitously we have received
Jesus has lived the passion for compassion. Let us humbly follow him by announcing with words and examples that only unconditional love can generate unconditional lovers.
Patristic Reading
Saint Augustine of Hippo
Discourse 259
Be compassionate with your fellow man and God will have compassion on you. You and the other are both men and both miserable. God, on the other hand, is not miserable but merciful. That if the wretched man does not use compassion with the wretched, how can he assume that mercy is being used on him by him who is free from all misery? Think, brothers, about what I tell you. Imagine one who is cruel to a person who has been shipwrecked: he will be cruel until he too is shipwrecked. If, however, he has encountered it, remembering his previous life, when he encounters a castaway he will feel struck by the identical state of misery in which he himself had found himself in the past, and, if he had not allowed himself to move in compassion for belonging to the common human family, the experience of the same misfortune will bend him. How easy it is for you to feel compassion for a slave o who lived in slavery! How does it arise spontaneously, in the soul of a worker who has not been paid, the penalty for a defrauded workmate! Of a person who mourns the fate of his child, how one who has had to mourn for the same reason at other times is moved to warm tears! Concluding: Being in the same misfortune breaks the hardness of the human heart, however great it may be. And now to you, who have either been in misery or are afraid of falling into it. For as long as you are in this world, you must fear the misfortunes you have not been in until now, just as you must remember those you have experienced and those you live in the present. Well, if you remember the misadventures of the past, if you fear the future, if you are currently in affliction, will you not have compassion for those who have fallen into some misfortune and need your help, thus waiting for the compassion of those who are above all misery? If you don't give even a little of what you received from God, how do you expect God to give you what he didn't receive from you?
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