PARISH NEWS

What are we to do? 

So, we approach the end of another Easter season. We have re-lived Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. In the light of it all, what are we to do? The definitive answer is here in this Sunday’s gospel from Matthew (Matt 28:16-20). Jesus’ closest disciples have lived the mission with him: learning, growing, tentative success, failure, betrayal, their own cowardice, the awesome resurrection. They have been invited to this mountain top where Jesus is leaving them to the task he has commanded.

And what is it they are called to? No less than making disciples of all, baptising all, teaching all to observe his commandments. Big job, but they and we can’t say we weren’t told.

This is the day when Jesus’ first disciples (and we later followers) take a deep breath and consider the enormity of the task in light of Jesus’ promise to be with us always to the end of time.

Impossible for Jesus’ ill-educated riff raff without power or connections! Yet by the time the last of them had died, their revolutionary message of God who loves all equally and absolutely, had spread and had profound effect across the Mediterranean. Today, nearly a third of the world are Christians but we, heirs to those first disciples, still have a big task to complete.

Firstly we need to re-convert ourselves: are we living the commands? Are we sharing Jesus’ teaching with our brothers and sisters? Then we commit to re-convert many in our supposedly Christian society who obviously haven’t properly heard or understood, or whose hearts have not been touched by Jesus’ teaching. And then we ponder how to make, through the example of our society’s selfless love, generosity, compassion and care, disciples of all nations.

Deacon Mark Kelly