Readings (Year A):
Exodus 19:2 – 6a
Psalms 100:1 – 2, 3, 5
Romans 5:6 – 11
Matthew 9:36 – 10:8
Reflection: Remember how much God loves you
I serve as communications director at a parish in Minnesota where a parishioner named Teena recently received an award from the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women for her volunteering. This meant I had the happy task of using our parish communications channels to tell Teena’s story and highlight her five decades of service in our parish community.
Assisting with youth retreats, providing meals for unhoused families when the parish provided overnight shelter, participating in our annual outreach to provide holiday baskets with food, gifts, and blankets to under resourced families, leading word and communion services and Lenten stations of the cross, contributing to efforts to welcome refugee families in our community—Teena has done it all.
The communications I shared celebrating Teena’s award received many words of congratulations and blessing from fellow parishioners. I was struck by Teena’s response to these messages: after thanking well-wishers for their kindness, she wrote, “never forget how much God loves you.”
Teena’s example speaks to relationship between the readings that the lectionary places side by side: a passage from Exodus recounting God’s message to those making the journey from Egypt to the promised land, and Jesus’ sending out of the Twelve to minister to others. God tells Moses to remind the people of God’s special care, to remind them they are chosen and precious. As a people, they are beloved.
In the gospel, Jesus is moved with deep compassion for those who suffer. He responds by sending out the twelve with a bold task: cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons.
Being offered these readings alongside one challenges us to recognize that knowing we are beloved comes first—before any efforts of mission, ministry, or service. If we don’t start with knowing our beloved-ness through and through, motivations get muddy. Rather than ministry being a freely given gift, our efforts can be driven by a need to prove our goodness and worthiness, to win praise and admiration. When we don’t keep at our center the truth that we are God’s precious possession, our attempts to care can devolve into attempts to control. And this is a recipe for fatigue, resentment, and conflict.
Part of ongoing conversion as disciples of Jesus, sent out as laborers for the harvest, is growing in freedom.
Freedom to say “yes” to an invitation to service when we discern that we are called to share our gifts generously.
Freedom to say “no” to an invitation to service when it’s not the right time or season for us to serve in that particular way.
Freedom to serve joyfully—whether those we serve respond with gratitude or indifference, appreciation, or annoyance.
Freedom to serve peacefully—whether others applaud us or ignore us.
Freedom to know we are precious just as we are—that while we are called to do great things, our identity as God’s beloved is never in question.
Freedom that comes from knowing we are beloved comes first, and all our actions overflow from that truth that can never, ever change.
Teena’s response to her award wasn’t to challenge others to volunteer more, to give more, to serve more, but a simple, “Remember how much God loves you.” Jesus still calls us to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons. And we begin to respond to that call by remembering when we have been borne up on eagle’s wings, when we have God name us as beloved, precious, and chosen.
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