Scripture readings for June 14, 2026, Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ex 19:2-6a Ps 100:1-2, 3, 5 Rom 5:6-11 Mt 9:36—10:8
As we conclude the Easter season celebrating a beautiful litany of feasts, it makes sense that the Church would remind us again of the evangelical mission, the work Christ calls each of us to take up, each in his or her own way.
That is, after celebrating the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the dogmatic and sacramental truth of it all in the Solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi, it makes sense that the Church would tell us a story that reminds us basically to get back to work.
The way St. Clement of Rome put it long ago in his first epistle to the Corinthians, he said, “Christ received his commission from God, and the apostles theirs from Christ…And as they went…they appointed their first converts.” That’s where our minds are to go as we read this story from Matthew. As we read this story again, we are to think not only about this initial sending but about all subsequent sendings.
“As the Father has sent me, even so I send you,” Jesus said after his resurrection (Jn 20:21). “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” he said to the disciples in Galilee (Mt 28:19). “Yet the drive to go forth and give, to go out from ourselves, to keep pressing forward in our sowing of the good seed, remains ever present,” Pope Francis wrote in “Evangelii Gaudium.”
Spiritually speaking, the sending we read about in this Sunday’s Gospel reading is the same sending as all the sendings that follow. That’s the evangelical point I think we’re supposed to feel as much as intellectually grasp, inspired that we’ve been recruited to work for the building up of God’s kingdom.
But what else can we learn? Let’s look at this passage more closely. Jesus has “pity” on the crowds because they are “troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt 9:36). The shepherd imagery here gives us a clue that we should interpret this story in light of the idea that Christ is the Good Shepherd meant to gather and restore Israel (Jn 10:1-18). That is, of course, in this story Jesus is taking pity on the literal crowd before him, but we’re free to think here in larger terms, about the bigger picture. That is, this is a story about the whole mission of Christ, a mission that includes the apostles and even us.
And so, it’s appropriate to think that we can learn from this story the characteristics also of our own missionary work. The first thing to learn is that before we are sent, we are called, “summoned” by Jesus. The disciples do not set off on their own; rather, Jesus calls them to himself first to give them “authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness” (Mt 10:1). The same is true for us; we do not set out on our own, not without first being called by Christ. Here we come to the origin of the theology of vocation and authority. But that’s another topic.
What interests me more is just what exactly the work of Christian mission entails. Here I wish our lectionary friends had started this Sunday’s passage one verse earlier, for that earlier verse reads, “Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching…and healing every disease and infirmity” (Mt 9:35).
Now the reason that’s interesting is because that’s the exact same work Jesus gives his disciples to do: “to heal every disease and infirmity” (Mt 10:1). Which is the second great lesson we learn from this early sending story, that not only do we work for the kingdom because Christ has called us, but that the work we do is also Christ’s work.
All of which simply adds to the Church’s mystagogy of recent weeks. As the Spirit dwells in us, full of truth and ready to offer the world reconciliation and the Body and Blood of Christ, so now as Catholics, we do in our day what the apostles did in theirs, what all the saints before us did too. That is, in retelling the story of this first sending, the Church is telling us not only to get back to work but to remember just whose work it is and in whom we work, that it really is Christ who lives in us (Gal 2:20).
Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books.
