How many of us have heard someone elderly say, "I don't want to be a burden"? That sentiment comes from a lifetime of believing we can and should pull our own weight. Many of us started this at the age of 2: "I CAN DO IT MYSELF!" Then, school taught us that sharing answers might be cheating and we learned to think that needing help makes us look weak. 

Today's readings invite us to reconsider that idea. 

We begin with Moses, the great lawgiver. Let's look carefully. Moses wasn't talking about the 613 instructions we find in the first five books of our Scriptures. Rather, like Jesus would do 1,300 years later, he taught that the Law is designed to bind us to God and to one another. 

Listen to Moses' message. God's law is not mysterious or highfalutin. It's not impossible to follow. He says it's already inside us, in our hearts and our mouths, adding, "You only have to carry it out."

At the beginning of his speech, Moses says, turn to God "with all your heart and all your soul." We have a sense of what he means by "all your heart." What we often misinterpret is "all your soul." In Hebrew, soul (nephesh) doesn't refer to some mysterious "spiritual" part of us, rather, it means our whole life — everything we are and do. Everything! 

St. Paul offers us a meditation on what this means as he talks about Christ's life. He invites us to consider Christ Jesus as the clearest possible image of God. He calls Christ the "firstborn," implying that everything that comes after Christ from the beginning of creation reflects the divine — and humans in a unique way because we can choose whether or not to grow as images of God. 

Paul tells us that, "all things hold together" in Christ. That is, as the Gospel of John (17:21-23) tells us, the purpose of our life is to recognize that we are one with God and neighbor. As Moses said, this union is part of who we are; our goal is to realize that in both the sense of understanding it and in the sense of living it out. 

This takes us to Jesus' tale about the good Samaritan. This traveler saw a victim of violence and was moved. He knew what it was like to be disregarded by the elites — and the fellow on the side of the road obviously shared that situation with him. Neither of them were treated like genuine human beings. They were both what some call "redundant," people considered unnecessary, not worth bothering about. 

The Samaritan saw a man in whom he recognized a fellow human being. He didn't just see him, he "had compassion." 

In Greek, compassion (splanchnizomai) describes an intense emotion. It's a gut feeling of identification with another, literally to feel their need so deeply that you physically yearn for what the other needs. This compassion comprehends the unity of humanity, a reality deeper than any differences of nationality, gender, ethnicity, religious belief or anything else that separates one from another. 

To the Samaritan, the victim was not a "burden," but one like himself, related to him long before they ever saw each other. The Samaritan made the man's need his own and gave all he could to remedy his situation.

The Samaritan fulfilled Moses' commandment to find God's law in his heart and to carry it out. He heeded God's voice with his heart and soul; in the process, his soul became larger and the victim became his neighbor. The Samaritan gave God more room to act in and through him. His relationship with God deepened because he allowed God's love to be poured out through his heart (Romans 5:5).

We listen and meditate on the Scriptures to know Christ and learn how to practice his mission today. In this Jubilee Year of learning to be pilgrims of hope, this parable hits us in the gut. When communications media bring the world into our homes and onto our phones, our sense of being neighbors has become global. Our neighbor is anyone we bother to see.

Our challenge is to relate to the suffering people in our world like neighbors, never considering them burdensome. To do that, we need to overcome our erroneous faith in individual independence. 

The Trinity is a community. We reflect the divine image when we become ever more deeply related to one another, when we see each person as a part of ourselves and necessary to the well-being of God's entire creation. We know this truth in our hearts; all we need to do is carry it out.

What would it have been like to be among the 72 Jesus sent out to preach his Gospel? Did they feel prepared for their mission? Considering the lack of expertise of the Twelve who walked with Jesus full time, what must 72 more or less random disciples have been like? 

Jesus sent them out in utter vulnerability — no credit cards, no special garb to underwrite their authority, not even a per diem to assure them of room and board. Add to it, he told them they would be like lambs among wolves.

Crazy? Absolutely! Worth the risk? Apparently so. It worked then and inexpert people, including ourselves, continue to offer Christ's living message to others.

What did Jesus ask of them? To demonstrate that God's reign was active in their world. Jesus saw a world desperately in need of healing and hope. He saw oppression, not only on the political level, but throughout society where "important" people disparaged those they considered beneath them because of their poverty, occupation, gender or any other "distinguishing" marks. 

The disciples' only mission was to reveal how God was reigning in their world. Jesus offered them no preaching technique, no potions or blessing formula, he simply sent them out in peace to receive what was offered and to heal those in need.

What happened in the process amazed them as much as anyone else. Reporting back to Jesus they said, "Even the demons are subject to us because of your name!"

Because they had gone in the name of Jesus, bringing his love and energy to each situation, their very presence healed. That was the secret of the peace they shared. 

If people were open to their message, the experience of God's reign grew among them. When people refused the message, the disciples could move on in peace, knowing that what God offers can never be imposed, it can only be welcomed.

What gave them such great power? St. Paul described it to the Galatians. He explained that people who share God's love know God's reign is among them. They have become a new creation. They are free from the need to protect themselves from the unknown or social norms that demand certain types of behavior. As Isaiah promises, no matter the circumstances, they can flourish like grass because their way of living draws forth all that they can become and they know God is with them.

Today's Liturgy of the Word dares us to be sheep among wolves, to be evangelizers in a world dying for lack of love. The wolves of our time are purveyors of the fear and hatred that spawn every type of bigotry, division, violence and lies.

Pope Leo XIV tells us that as disciples, we are sent into "many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent. Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power or pleasure ... where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied."

What do we have to offer? Like the inexpert 72, we've got nothing more than our experience of the joy of living Christ's message. As disciples, we can continue to share experiences of love, hope and possibility that are strong enough to seduce others into believing the unbelievable: that the reign of God is at hand.

If we want to succeed in taking up Jesus' mission, we will draw people through attraction rather than rational proofs. We need to know our faith by heart and accept the fact that what we offer will only attract the hungry; the complacent know how to stay safe behind what old toothpaste ads called "an invisible protective shield." As Leo points out, they prefer the kind of securities they can buy or demand. They are tragically out of touch with their deepest yearnings, invulnerable to knowing the vastness of God's love.

Evangelizers know that the reign of God they announce is real. They've experienced it in communion with God and others. They know it can't be proven, only experienced, and when it is experienced, it's contagious. 

That's the secret of greeting a household with "Shalom, peace." People disposed to receive the Gospel and the fullness it offers, will share the disciples' peace. The missionaries continue on in peace, knowing that they offered — even if their offerings were not appreciated. 

We are today's 72. The evangelization we can offer has little to do with expertise. Rather, it's the contagious energy of God's reign among us. It has the power to make Satan fall like lightning, noisy and momentarily impressive, but gone in a flash. 

Most of all, our awareness of God's reigning grows prodigiously as we share it. We can only share what we have, and that is enough.