Before the Mission, the Mountain
There are mornings when the day seems to begin before we do.
The work is already waiting. The messages have arrived. There are people who need answers, machines that need fixing, children who need breakfast, roads that need traveling, decisions that cannot indefinitely be postponed.
And then today’s Gospel gives us a curious picture of Christ.
He has work to do too.
He is about to choose the Twelve Apostles—the men upon whom, in a very real sense, the visible mission of the Church will be built.
But first he goes up a mountain.
And he prays all night.
Before the names, before the journeys, before the preaching, before Simon and Jude and Peter and Andrew and all the astonishing history that will follow, there is silence on a mountain.
Perhaps that is a useful place for us to begin this morning too.
OPENING VERSE
Lord, open my lips.
And my mouth shall declare thy praise.
INVITATORY
Antiphon: Come, let us adore Christ the Lord, who chose the Apostles and sent them into all the world.
Psalm 94 (95)
Come let us praise the Lord with joy:
let us joyfully sing to God our saviour.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving;
and make a joyful noise to him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
For in his hand are all the ends of the earth:
and the heights of the mountains are his.
For the sea is his, and he made it:
and his hands formed the dry land.
Come let us adore and fall down:
and weep before the Lord that made us.
For he is the Lord our God:
and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
Today if you shall hear his voice,
harden not your hearts:
As in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness:
where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works.
Forty years long was I offended with that generation,
and I said: These always err in heart.
And these men have not known my ways:
so I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: Come, let us adore Christ the Lord, who chose the Apostles and sent them into all the world.
PSALMODY
Psalm 62 (63)
Antiphon 1: This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.
O God, my God, to thee do I watch at break of day.
For thee my soul hath thirsted;
for thee my flesh, O how many ways!
In a desert land, and where there is no way, and no water:
so in the sanctuary have I come before thee, to see thy power and thy glory.
For thy mercy is better than lives:
thee my lips shall praise.
Thus will I bless thee all my life long:
and in thy name I will lift up my hands.
Let my soul be filled as with marrow and fatness:
and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips.
If I have remembered thee upon my bed,
I will meditate on thee in the morning:
Because thou hast been my helper.
And I will rejoice under the covert of thy wings:
My soul hath stuck close to thee:
thy right hand hath received me.
But they have sought my soul in vain, they shall go into the lower parts of the earth:
They shall be delivered into the hands of the sword,
they shall be the portions of foxes.
But the king shall rejoice in God, all they shall be praised that swear by him:
because the mouth is stopped of them that speak wicked things.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
Antiphon 1: This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.
Canticle — Daniel 3:57–88, 56
Antiphon 2: Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord:
praise and exalt him above all for ever.
O ye angels of the Lord, bless the Lord:
O ye heavens, bless the Lord.
O all ye waters that are above the heavens, bless the Lord:
O all ye powers of the Lord, bless the Lord.
O ye sun and moon, bless the Lord:
O ye stars of heaven, bless the Lord.
O every shower and dew, bless ye the Lord:
O all ye spirits of God, bless the Lord.
O ye fire and heat, bless the Lord:
O ye cold and heat, bless the Lord.
O ye dews and hoar frosts, bless the Lord:
O ye frost and cold, bless the Lord.
O ye ice and snow, bless the Lord:
O ye nights and days, bless the Lord.
O ye light and darkness, bless the Lord:
O ye lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord.
O let the earth bless the Lord:
let it praise and exalt him above all for ever.
O ye mountains and hills, bless the Lord:
O all ye things that spring up in the earth, bless the Lord.
O ye fountains, bless the Lord:
O ye seas and rivers, bless the Lord.
O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, bless the Lord:
O all ye fowls of the air, bless the Lord.
O all ye beasts and cattle, bless the Lord:
O ye sons of men, bless the Lord.
O let Israel bless the Lord:
let them praise and exalt him above all for ever.
O ye priests of the Lord, bless the Lord:
O ye servants of the Lord, bless the Lord.
O ye spirits and souls of the just, bless the Lord:
O ye holy and humble of heart, bless the Lord.
O Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, bless ye the Lord:
praise and exalt him above all for ever.
Let us bless the Father and the Son, with the Holy Ghost:
let us praise and exalt him above all for ever.
Blessed art thou, O Lord, in the firmament of heaven:
and worthy of praise, and glorious for ever.
Antiphon 2: Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Psalm 149
Antiphon 3: The names of the Apostles are written upon the foundations of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Lamb is its light.
Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle:
let his praise be in the church of the saints.
Let Israel rejoice in him that made him:
and let the children of Sion be joyful in their king.
Let them praise his name in choir:
let them sing to him with the timbrel and the psaltery.
For the Lord is well pleased with his people:
and he will exalt the meek unto salvation.
The saints shall rejoice in glory:
they shall be joyful in their beds.
The high praises of God shall be in their mouth:
and two-edged swords in their hands:
To execute vengeance upon the nations,
chastisements among the people:
To bind their kings with fetters,
and their nobles with manacles of iron.
To execute upon them the judgment that is written:
this glory is to all his saints.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
Antiphon 3: The names of the Apostles are written upon the foundations of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Lamb is its light.
SHORT READING
Ephesians 2:19–22
Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners; but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God,
Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone:
In whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord.
In whom you also are built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit.
SHORT RESPONSORY
Their voice hath gone forth into all the earth.
And their words unto the ends of the world.
They proclaimed the wonderful works of God.
And their words unto the ends of the world.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
Their voice hath gone forth into all the earth.
THE GOSPEL OF THE DAY
Luke 6:12–16
And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and he passed the whole night in the prayer of God.
And when day was come, he called unto him his disciples; and he chose twelve of them (whom also he named apostles):
Simon, whom he surnamed Peter, and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew,
Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alpheus, and Simon who is called Zelotes,
And Jude, the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, who was the traitor.
BENEDICTUS
Antiphon: When day was come, Jesus called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named Apostles.
Canticle of Zachary — Luke 1:68–79
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel;
because he hath visited and wrought the redemption of his people:
And hath raised up an horn of salvation to us,
in the house of David his servant:
As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets,
who are from the beginning:
Salvation from our enemies,
and from the hand of all that hate us:
To perform mercy to our fathers,
and to remember his holy testament,
The oath, which he swore to Abraham our father,
that he would grant to us,
That being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
we may serve him without fear,
In holiness and justice before him,
all our days.
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest:
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways:
To give knowledge of salvation to his people,
unto the remission of their sins:
Through the bowels of the mercy of our God,
in which the Orient from on high hath visited us:
To enlighten them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death:
to direct our feet into the way of peace.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen.
Antiphon: When day was come, Jesus called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named Apostles.
INTERCESSIONS
Christ called ordinary men to become his Apostles and sent them to carry the Gospel into the world. Trusting in him, we pray:
Lord Jesus, teach us to follow thee faithfully.
For thy Church throughout the world: preserve her in the faith handed down from the Apostles, strengthen her bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and lay faithful, and make her a courageous witness to thy truth.
Lord Jesus, teach us to follow thee faithfully.
For those who preach the Gospel in difficult or dangerous places: give them the courage of Simon and Jude, and let their lives bear witness even when their words are rejected.
Lord Jesus, teach us to follow thee faithfully.
For nations divided by anger, suspicion, war, and political hatred: teach us that no earthly faction can take the place of the Kingdom of God.
Lord Jesus, teach us to follow thee faithfully.
For our work today: for workshops and offices, classrooms and kitchens, farms and factories, hospitals and homes; make our ordinary labor an offering of patience, competence, honesty, and love.
Lord Jesus, teach us to follow thee faithfully.
For our families and those entrusted to our care: guard those who travel, strengthen those who worry, reconcile those who are divided, and bring peace into our homes.
Lord Jesus, teach us to follow thee faithfully.
For the sick, the lonely, the discouraged, and all who believe their troubles are beyond hope: through the intercession of Saint Jude, renew in them confidence in thy mercy.
Lord Jesus, teach us to follow thee faithfully.
For those who have died, especially those known and loved by us: receive them into the company of the Apostles and saints, where every journey finds its home.
Lord Jesus, teach us to follow thee faithfully.
And for ourselves: before we rush into the duties of this day, teach us to follow thee up the mountain; to listen before speaking, to pray before acting, and to remember whose work we are really doing.
Lord Jesus, teach us to follow thee faithfully.
OUR FATHER
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
CONCLUDING PRAYER
O God, who didst choose the Apostles to carry the Gospel of thy Son into the world, grant us, through the prayers of Saints Simon and Jude, constancy in faith and courage in witness.
Teach us to seek thee before we seek success, to listen before we act, and to build our lives upon Christ, the cornerstone whom no power of this world can overturn.
May thy Church grow in holiness, charity, and truth, until every nation hears the good news of salvation.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
BLESSING
May the Lord bless us,
and keep us from all evil,
and bring us unto everlasting life.
Amen.
THE PARADOX OF THE DAY
The men Christ would send into all the world were chosen only after he had withdrawn from the world to pray.
CHESTERTON FOR THE MORNING
“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”
— G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, “The Paradoxes of Christianity”
A CHESTERTONIAN MEDITATION
Before the Mission, the Mountain
There is something wonderfully inconvenient about a mountain.
A mountain is rarely where we have put the road. It does not consult our timetable. It rises in the wrong place, makes us go around it, slows the railway, strains the engine, blocks the view, and generally behaves as though geography had never heard of efficiency.
Modern man, confronted by a mountain, immediately begins considering tunnels.
Christ, confronted by a mountain, went up it to pray.
And today’s Gospel tells us that he stayed there all night.
That detail matters.
The following morning Christ will choose the Twelve. Peter will be there, with all his glorious impetuosity. John will be there. Thomas will be there. Simon the Zealot will be there. Jude will be there.
Judas Iscariot will be there too.
It is one of the startling things about Christianity that the Church begins not with a committee of flawless men but with twelve very human ones.
One will deny Christ.
One will doubt.
Two will ask for the best seats.
Several will misunderstand almost everything at crucial moments.
One will betray him.
And yet these are the men Christ chooses after a night of prayer.
That ought to make us reconsider what we mean when we say that something is going according to God’s plan.
We often imagine Providence as a particularly efficient form of project management.
If God is guiding something, we think, there should be fewer surprises, fewer incompetent people, fewer reversals, fewer misunderstandings, fewer broken schedules and certainly fewer Judases.
But Christianity begins its conquest of the world with a carpenter who has nowhere to lay his head and twelve men who frequently fail to understand him.
And it works.
Perhaps we have confused divine order with human tidiness.
There is a great difference between a thing being organized and a thing being alive.
A filing cabinet is organized. A tree is alive.
The filing cabinet is much neater.
The tree is considerably more interesting.
Saints Simon and Jude belong to that astonishingly living thing Christ planted in the world. We know comparatively little about them. Peter strides noisily through the Gospels. Thomas gets a famous scene. John gives us a Gospel.
Simon and Jude stand nearer the edge of the photograph.
Simon is called the Zealot. Jude asks Christ a question at the Last Supper. Ancient tradition associates both with missionary work and martyrdom.
And then, in the earthly record, they largely disappear.
Yet the Church remembers them.
This is another Christian paradox.
We tend to think importance must be visible.
The important man has his name on the door.
The important building is the tallest one.
The important story is the one everybody is discussing this morning.
The important number is the one displayed on the screen.
But Christ founded his Church upon Apostles, several of whom almost vanish from the surviving story.
Apparently one can help change the world without becoming famous for changing it.
This is exceedingly good news.
Most of us will not have biographies written about us. There will be no marble statue commemorating the afternoon we finally solved the problem with the leaking pipe, completed the spreadsheet, repaired the machine, comforted the child, answered the difficult email without losing our temper, or drove three hundred miles because somebody needed us at the other end.
History will be scandalously silent about the Tuesday when we simply did our duty.
Heaven may not be.
Saint Simon is remembered because Christ called him.
Saint Jude is remembered because Christ called him.
And that may finally be the most important fact about either man.
Not what they accomplished.
Not how far they traveled.
Not how many people listened.
They were called.
Then they went.
There is an extraordinary freedom in this.
We spend a great deal of energy trying to measure the results of things that God may simply have asked us to do.
Did it succeed?
Did people notice?
Did the numbers improve?
Did somebody thank us?
Did the world change?
Those may sometimes be sensible questions. They are not always the first question.
The first question is whether the thing was ours to do.
Christ’s own preparation for choosing the Apostles is instructive precisely because it looks, to modern eyes, so unproductive.
He spends the night praying.
Nothing is manufactured.
No report is issued.
No miles are traveled.
No crowd is addressed.
No Apostle is yet chosen.
By the standards of visible productivity, nothing happens.
By morning, everything is ready to happen.
That is why prayer is so easily underestimated.
Prayer can look like doing nothing because its first purpose is not to alter the world but to place us correctly within it.
It reminds the creature that he is a creature.
It reminds the worker whose work this really is.
It reminds the traveler that choosing the right road matters more than traveling rapidly down the wrong one.
And perhaps that is why the mountain comes before the mission.
We want the mission first.
We want to get moving.
There is an email to answer, a meeting to attend, a machine to repair, a child to dress, a customer to call, a journey to make. Surely we can pray after we have dealt with the urgent things.
But urgent things possess a remarkable reproductive capacity.
Finish three and five more appear.
There will always be another thing demanding to be done.
The mountain interrupts all that.
For a few minutes in the morning, we climb out of the machinery.
We remember that the sun rose without our assistance.
We remember that the world existed before our alarm clock rang.
We remember that God has managed the universe through another night without requiring us to supervise it.
This is not an argument against work.
It is an argument for sane work.
Chesterton understood that Christian courage contains a contradiction. The courageous man values his life so much that he is willing to risk it for something greater than life.
Something similar is true of Christian action.
The Christian takes his work seriously enough to stop working.
He takes the day’s responsibilities seriously enough to pray before beginning them.
He takes the world seriously enough to remember that he is not its saviour.
There is tremendous relief in that last discovery.
Christ has already come.
We have not been asked to replace him.
We have merely been asked to follow.
Simon followed.
Jude followed.
They walked into a world vastly larger than themselves carrying a Gospel they had not invented and a mission they had not designed.
And because they did, somewhere centuries later, on an ordinary October morning, we remember their names.
The mountain still stands before the mission.
The world will begin shouting soon enough.
For another moment, stay here.
Then go where you are sent.
Lord Jesus Christ, who didst call Simon and Jude by name, call us again this morning from distraction into attention, from fear into faith, and from prayer into faithful action.
Let us climb the mountain before we enter the world.
And when the time comes, let us go.
Chesterton Radio