Today’s Gospel is very intriguing, as Jesus sends out his disciples with very little on their journey. Having traveled as a missionary, and having hiked several times on long pilgrimages, this Gospel is not just a story, but it is reality to me. When we head off on a long journey with everything carried on our backs or when we travel a long distance and have certain limitations, we really pay attention to what we pack. Back in 1990, I was leaving to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. I had received a list of recommended items to bring. I was going to be serving in a very remote area without any running water or electricity, so there were certain things I needed to bring. However, there was a weight requirement on the luggage: our two pieces of luggage could not weigh more than 50 lbs in total. My mom was really good at packing things, so I remember she and my two sisters had my small backpack and small duffle bag on a bathroom scale and were helping me weigh everything. They had it down to a science. I decided to not take a lot of things that were just too heavy. I got my things into those two small bags, but there was a lot I left behind. When all 50 of us Peace Corps volunteers were together at O’Hare airport getting our luggage checked in, I was amazed at how huge those other duffle bags were compared to mine. My two bags looked like they were miniature compare to everyone else’s. Someone asked: Whose tiny little bags are those? When I confessed that they were mine, everyone was laughing and amazed that I thought they were going to be strict about the weight requirements. Oh well – at least I knew that I wasn’t weighed down with what I had.
I don’t think Jesus was trying to be mean or a control freak in telling his disciples to pack lightly on their journey. In his own way, he showed them what needed to be important in their lives on their journey of discipleship. We can get bogged down in trying to carry too many superfluous things along with us. In the last few weeks in the Gospel, we talked about the importance of having a disposition that allows for God’s grace to have an affect in our lives. Having a faith that is open to miracles and that has confidence in Christ’s power and authority is important. Living a life of Gospel simplicity is also essential for us to allow God’s grace to enter our lives, in order for us to be able to travel through life as a person of faith.
But what do we mean by Gospel simplicity? Packing lightly for our journey and the concept of Gospel simplicity are linked closely together. As we move out of childhood and into our teenage and adult years, we have a lot of priorities pulling at our lives. We can agonize about the big decisions we have in life. We can become anxious about the future. We can try to serve God, but we can become distracted by other priorities and other influences and other messages crying out to us in the world. At its core, Gospel simplicity is the gift of undivided heart. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said that we should have purity of heart – to be able to will only one thing in our lives. The Bible warns us against idolatry, of making something more important than God. The Catechism says that Idolatry refers to more than false pagan worship. Idolatry can be a constant temptation for us on our journey. In our idol worship, we honor and revere something in place of God, whether this be gods or demons, power, pleasure, work, accomplishments, money or material possessions. No matter who we are, we are to will one thing in our lives, to simplify our lives down to what Jesus would have us do and be - nothing more or nothing less - because nothing else is needed!
One of the greatest lessons I had in life was when I served as a missionary in Canada. I worked at a soup kitchen and a food back full-time for two years. I received $350 a month from those agencies to pay all of my living expenses. Even though this was more than 25 years ago, that was not a lot of money. I lived with four other missionaries in the inner city of Winnipeg in an old boarding house. We kept our money in common and paid all of our expenses out of it. And believe or not, at the end of each year, we always had some money left over. I felt that my entire life was devoted to serving God in my work there in Winnipeg – in living very simply and earnestly in my vocation as a lay missionary. And I felt a lot of blessings in those two years, even though that experience was not always easy. As a priest, I constantly think about how I want to live out a Gospel simplicity in my life, about how that is a part of my vocation, about the things I need to get rid of in order to be able live out the Gospel message.
Sometimes, we hear God calling us to a place in our lives that is unexpected and uncomfortable. When Jesus gathered his disciples together, sending them to unknown parts to be missionaries out into the world, sending them with barely any provisions, I am sure some of them were anxious and afraid. Yet, they went out with grateful hearts. They tried not to carry those things with them that would bog them down on their journey. Where is God calling out to us today? What do we need to take out of our backpack in order to better prepared to respond to that call.
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