Wednesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

Looking at this scene, someone today might conclude that Jesus was a bad Christian. He is going around healing all these people, and then he stops in order to go and preach.

If somebody did that today, everyone around him would say, “You just don’t have compassion on us. You’re not willing to meet our needs, even though you have the power to do it. Instead, you’re going off to do your own thing.”

The people here are so focused on the one thing they want—healing for their people—that they cannot see the good in the broader mission, much less the greater good that is Christ’s mission.

Christ did not come into the world only to heal the sick. He does, in fact, heal, exorcise, and perform other miracles in order to restore to us our freedom as God’s creation. These are real goods and genuine parts of his mission. But all of them are subordinated to and serve the greater mission for which he has been sent: to proclaim the good news, to free us from sin and death, and to offer us salvation and eternal life. That is what he is here for, and everything else he does is ordered toward that purpose.

In almost every town he visits, all the people think he is there simply to fix their problem, without any reference to anything greater. That is why, if he were here today, he would face unlimited criticism for focusing on his broader mission rather than on the things people actually want day to day.

It is so easy for us to fall into that same trap in our lives and in the spiritual life. We become focused on a singular good—and it is a real good—yet miss the broader picture. Every one of us shares in the mission Christ himself has: offering salvation to all people and spreading the good news. Yet we can become so caught up in the little things that support that mission that we forget the bigger mission itself.

We forget what we are really called to. The greater good falls by the wayside, and we focus only on the little things. That makes us less and less effective, because we are not achieving the one thing God truly wants us to achieve.

So sometimes it is good for us to stop and evaluate where we are. Have we become so focused on something small, on a particular good, that we have lost the broader good, the greater good, the bigger message—that we are to spread the Gospel to all people?

We are called by Christ to feed the poor, to bring healing, and to do all the other works entrusted to us. These are real goods and genuine parts of our mission. But none of them is the whole mission or its ultimate end. Each must be ordered toward the greater mission: increasing holiness, spreading the Gospel, and offering salvation and eternal life to all people.

That is always our goal: spreading the Gospel and offering salvation to all people. Anything we have become focused on that distracts us from that greater goal, we must let go of. We must refocus ourselves and begin spreading that word so that all people can hear Christ’s message.