Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Imagine Joseph’s perspective in today’s First Reading (Genesis 41-42). After being betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery, he can now exact revenge on them. The world is in famine, and Joseph is in charge of distributing food to the globe’s starving families, including his own. After years of immense suffering due solely to the envy of his brothers, he can now make them pay for what they have done to him. Yet, Joseph refrains. It’s a difficult moment that does not merit an easy ethical solution. At the end of the story, his brothers work for him in his service to do good for the nations.
Analogously, in today’s Gospel (Matthew 10:1-7), Jesus sends out his Apostles to cast out demons, cure every illness and do good works. Yet Jesus knows these friends will betray and abandon Him in his time of need. Yet when Jesus rises from the dead, He is in Joseph’s position. He can abjure his “friends” and write them off. I imagine that when the disciples encountered the risen Jesus, they must have felt immensely guilty – like how Joseph’s brothers felt in the First Reading. Yet Jesus and Joseph are merciful. They decide to forgive and send these traitors forth on a mission. Turncoats are now allies. Jesuits understand themselves as “sinners loved and sent forth by God” (General Congregation 32). The Apostles and Christians more broadly share this same spirit. We, like Joseph’s brothers and the Apostles, are all sinners sent forth and loved by God. God is merciful to us always, and we are invited to cooperate in Christ’s mission of mercy. Where is Jesus inviting me to share the mercy I have already been given?