SEVENTY TWO DISCIPLES

LUKE 10:1-12, 17-20

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

(Isaiah 66:10-14c; Psalm 66; Galatians 6:14-18)

Community Mass Homily – Fr. Raymond

THE SEVENTY TWO

When Jesus chose seventy two disciples to send out ahead of him he was surely making a statement to the first members of his Church. These first Christians were mainly Jews and, on consideration of the number he chose they would inevitably think of Moses and the seventy elders he was ordered by God to choose to help him in the governing of his people. Jesus was proclaiming himself as the New Moses, the New Deliverer of his people from the bondage of sin; the one of whom the first Moses was only a Type and Shadow.

The reason for Jesus’ need for the seventy two was basically the same as the reason for Moses’ need for the seventy viz that the job was too much for one man to handle. Jesus came as ‘really man’ with all the basic limitations of time and space that that implies. As a visible, tangible, preaching and teaching man he couldn’t be in every place and time for his people. He needed human helpers, he needed the extension of his bodily existence which is the church, his mystical Body on earth.

That there is something greater than the first Moses here we can surmise from the fact that Jesus chose seventy two, whereas Moses chose only seventy. There is surely a great significance in the extra two chosen by Jesus. Whereas Moses chose only seventy and God himself appointed the other two (the sons of Aaron) who went up the mountain with them, Jesus, on the other hand chose all seventy two himself, thereby giving a clue, for those who would ponder these things in their hearts, that he was assuming the role of God himself.

Another fact that we might ponder on in order to appreciate the greatness of the role that the disciples of Jesus were being called to is to contemplate the wonderful experience given to Moses’ seventy two. First, they could not go the whole way up the mountain, just as Jesus disciples could not come as close to the Father as his own Beloved Son. Second, nevertheless they did share in an awesome and even life threatening vision of God “They saw him as standing on a sapphire sea, and they ate and drank and did not die” (Ex.24) We are surely right to use this scene as a meditation on how awesome it is to be called work closely with Christ in the mission of his church.