Gospel (Lk 6:12-19)

In these days Jesus went out to the mountain to pray; and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when it was day, he called his disciples, and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles; Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

Commentary

As on other occasions, today's Gospel shows us how our Lord acts before an important event. He withdraws by himself to pray. In this case he spends the whole night in prayer. “When it was day,” he gathered his disciples and, from among them, he chose the twelve Apostles. They will be the witnesses to Jesus’ deeds and give continuity to his mission.

Today we celebrate two of those chosen twelve: Simon and Judas Thaddeus (only Luke calls him Judas the son of James, while Matthew and Mark call him Thaddeus). The difference between the disciples and that group of twelve, the Apostles, is strongly stressed. Our Lord will ground and build up his Church on them, on those twelve columns.

Our Lord chooses the Apostles and gives them the power to continue his work of salvation. He sends them out, as the Second Vatican Council reminds us, “so that as sharers in his power they might make all peoples his disciples, and sanctify and govern them, and thus spread his Church, and by ministering to it under the guidance of the Lord, direct it all days even to the consummation of the world.”^[1]

Today's feast and Gospel can help increase our love for Christ’s Church, which is apostolic because it was founded on the twelve Apostles, who, from the beginning, established their successors: the bishops.

^[1] Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, no. 19.