The Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head

1Kings 19,16b.19-21; Ps 33; 2Tm 4,6-8.17-18; Lk 9,51-62
30 JUNE

When the Lord calls, the before is left and the after does not exist. The after exists while we live, but we do not live according to the will of man called by the Lord, but by the will of the Lord who has called the man. Abraham leaves his father’s house. He hands himself over to God. His is an ever present, present. The future is only in the will of his God. Today, the Lord says and Abraham obeys. Tomorrow he says and tomorrow he will obey. The same is true for Moses and also for all the others who are called by him.

The Lord said to Abram: “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you” (Gen 12,1-3). But the Lord said, “I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the country of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. So indeed the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have truly noted that the Egyptians are oppressing them. Come, now! I will send you to Pharaoh to lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of Egypt?” He answered, “I will be with you; and this shall be your proof that it is I who have sent you: when you bring my people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this very mountain” (Ex 3,7-12).

Even Jesus, sent by God to work the redemption of the human kind, lives nothing by his will. He says and does all by immediate motion of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit tells him to go and He goes, to stop and He stops; to speak and He speaks, to perform a miracle and He does it. Today the Holy Spirit orders him to set out for Jerusalem and he sets out obeying with firm decision. If Jesus is neither a future nor a present from his will, can he give a present and a future to those whom he calls to his discipleship or to those who ask to follow him? Everyone gives what he has. Jesus has the Spirit that moves him and will give the Spirit that will move his Apostles and Disciples missionaries throughout the world. But who walks moved by the Spirit cannot program his life. If it is not all from the Holy Spirit, it cannot be a missionary life. The Spirit sends and the disciple goes. The mandate, the mission, is perennial, moment by moment, second by second. The true missionary is the one who is always sent. He who sends himself is not a missionary.

When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village. 

As they were proceeding on their journey someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” And to another he said, “Follow me.” But he replied, “(Lord,) let me go first and bury my father.” But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”  (To him) Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plough and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Every disciple of Jesus must choose. If he wants to be a missionary, he must always be sent by the Holy Spirit. If the disciple is the one who is sending himself, he is not a missionary. He is from his will, not from the will of the Spirit of the Lord. He who sends himself, is not sent. Who is sent does not send himself. Who has received a mission and modifies it, is no longer a missionary. The missionary is always from the will of the one who sent him.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints arrange that we are always missionaries according to the heart of God.