Proclaim the gospel to every creature
At 22,3-16 or At 9,1-22; Ps 116; Mk 16,15-18
25 JANUARY
The missionary command handed over by Jesus to the Twelve must be analyzed word by word. Its whole truth must be grasped. Since the command always obliges, never might it be disregarded; it is necessary to understand it in order to be able to obey it with a straight conscience, a science illuminated by the Holy Spirit and a firm and resolute will.
Go around the world. The Twelve must spread throughout the earth. They must also reach the most remote and not yet known islands. Where there is a man, they must be there. No people, race, language, nation and religion must be excluded. They are missionaries of the earth, not of a land, universal and not particular.
Proclaim the Gospel to every creature. The Twelve must go for a specific purpose. They go to proclaim the Gospel to every creature. The Gospel is not their word, their thoughts, their philosophies, their theologies and their reflections or meditations. The Gospel is the Word that Christ received from the Father and handed over to the Father. Nothing else.
Whoever believes and will be baptized will be saved. At the proclamation of the Word, of the Gospel, the first answer is given by faith. Whoever believes will necessarily have to go through the waters of baptism that will be done in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. With baptism the journey of true salvation begins.
But whoever does not believe will be condemned. When the Gospel is proclaimed in its truth and divine light, it compels faith. Whoever does not believe in the Gospel is excluded from salvation. On the contrary, he is condemned because he did not believe, he did not accept the gift that the Father offered him. The Father knocked. It was not opened to him. There is no salvation.
Today this delivery of Jesus the Lord to the Twelve, which obliges all their successors and all the ordained ministers associated with their apostolic mission through the sacrament of the priesthood, is strongly in crisis to motions of extraneous elements that have been sown in the Gospel, depriving it of its strength of salvation and redemption.
The command remains forever. It always and forever obliges. No human thought might ever repeal it. If this command is abrogated, the Gospel dies, the Church dies. It is useless to keep up the structure of the sacred of the Church, if then it is taught that salvation comes for other infinite ways all desired by God. It is falsehood.
He said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents (with their hands), and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
These will be the signs that will accompany those who believe. They are no longer the Twelve, as in the first mission to perform signs and wonders. Signs and wonders are the fruit of faith in the heart of every believer in Jesus the Lord. The history of the Church already reveals to us from the Acts of the Apostles the truth of this Word of Jesus.
In my name they will cast out demons, speak new tongues, pick up snakes with their hands, and if they drink some poison, it will not harm them, they will lay their hands on the sick and they will recover. As we can see, Jesus grants more power to those who believe in Him, than those exercised by Him. Everything is possible for the one who believes.
But when do we have faith in Christ? When we live the Word of Christ Jesus. Living the Word grows our participation in the divine nature of our nature that has become the nature of the body of Christ. Growing up in nature we also grow in signs and wonders. Everything in our religion is aimed at living the whole Word of Jesus. A Christian who does not live in the Word, does not believe in Christ, he is not even saved. Salvation is also from obedience to every Word of the Gospel. Everything is from life in the Gospel.
Mother of God, Angels and Saints, help us to make of our life an obedience to the Gospel.