Tony Worner, our Leader of Formation, presents our Gospel Reflections this week and today reads from the Gospel of Luke (10: 1-12), in which Jesus says, ‘Ask the Lord of the harvest, to send labourers to his harvest’.

Tony says, Jesus sends out seventy-two disciples to preach the good news in the towns of Galilee. Jesus is under no illusions about the difficulty of the task. Indeed, he likens it to sending sheep amongst the wolves. He gives them no material provisions. No food. No money. Just the power of his word, to cast out demons, and heal the sick in his name. Failure is to be expected, but they are not to dwell upon it. As they shake the dust off their feet, they predict the destruction of those cities.

Tony says, nothing has changed in the mission field today. Jesus calls us to preach his healing and transformative word. There will be successes and there will be failures.
The question, Tony says, is how do we deal with failure? We can trust the enduring promise of the kingdom, or we can let failure disempower us.

And so we pray that Jesus is always with us, journeying with us in all we do.