In today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus tell his Disciples to bring peace with them into every house they enter. So our task, too, as Christians, is to be bringers of peace – a peace that a close following of Jesus can bring. It is a peace that our society seldom seems to know, wracked as it is with so many externally caused stresses, fears and ambitions. Jesus sent out his seventy-two disciples “to all the places he himself was to visit.”
As people baptised in the name of Jesus, we are part of his body – Where the body is, there too, is the person. Where we go, Jesus also comes. He does not go before us, nor does he come after us. We come together. But if I do not go – if I do not reach out to others, then, to some extent, Jesus does not reach out. Each of us is part of his Body. We are the visible indication of his presence. Our voice is his voice. “He who hears you, hears me”, Jesus told his disciples. If we do not speak his message, who will get to hear it?
To be a labourer of the harvest is for the happiness of others to be as important as our own happiness. It is to experience inner peace, and to be a bringer of peace to others. How life would be changed if we all try to do that. What a difference it would make!