The Mission

Gospel: Mark 3: 13-19

In today's reading we find the very simple mission Jesus gives to the twelve: go, preach good news, and drive out demons. We live in a world filled with bad news and with people in the grips of all sorts of demons. News media traffics in bad news and it is this bad news that creates many of the demons that enslave human beings, pushing people to the enslavement of political ideologies on the one hand and to despair and cynicism on the other.  

But a Christian is a person of good news, the good news that God is present in every human life, the good news that God has loved us long before we thought of loving God, that the more we think of how much God loves us the greater love grows in our hearts.  In such a life of good news filled with the presence of God there can be no room for demons.  They have been expelled from our midst and we are free to love.  That is the mission of proclaiming good news and driving out demons.

We cannot be people who traffic in bad news, keeping people hostages to the demons such bad news spawns.  Each day we must commit to being people of good news, people who help others find that good news in their lives and helping others to free themselves from the demons of bad news that traverse the world, seeking to enslave us in political idolatry, cynicism, and despair.