Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 3, 2022 – Isaiah 66:10-14c; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

A lone rider on horseback travels through a chilly and damp October day. It’s near evening. His horse has carried him more than ten miles, from Lockport to the little village of Cayuga Creek, New York. It took him only three days to get from Rochester to Lockport on that marvel of modern travel, the Erie Canal, stopping along the way each evening to take whatever comfort there might be at a local tavern or farmhouse. As he rides along, the wind whips up and a light rain begins to blow in the wind with some icy needles of snow, the harbinger of a long, hard winter to come. Off in the distance he sees the glow from a lamplight in a window and knows he is nearing his destination. Dismounts his horse. Knocks on the door. The farmer opens the door and says, “Fr. Neumann it is so good to see you. Come in.”

That night, over a simple farmer’s dinner, they make plans for the next day. The older children will be sent to the outlying farms and, by horse, a little bit further on, to let everyone know that the priest is here. The day will be spent hearing confessions, anointing the sick, baptizing any babies that have been born in his absence, and planning with young couples for weddings to take place the next time he comes through. The farmers have been building a small stone church with the little money they’re able to collect and their own hard work. The wall’s about halfway built, about four feet high, and there is as yet no roof on the church. But, counting on good weather the next day, Fr. Neumann will celebrate Mass inside that little square, in the open air.

People gather from all around, maybe 24 or 25 families, representing 125 to 130 people from near and far. As they gather and stand inside that incomplete building, responding to the Latin prayers as best they can, stones begin to come over the wall. Anti-Catholic people outside the church. One of them lands right on the altar, just a couple of inches from Fr. Neumann’s chalice. But he’s unfazed because it happens all the time. It’s just, as they say, the cost of doing business.

That’s what Catholicism was like here in New York State just a century and a half ago; the 1830s. At that time the Archdiocese of New York was not simply ten counties with a base in Manhattan, it was all of New York State and the northern third of New Jersey. And there were only about 50 or 60 priests to care for all the Catholic people in that area. People got to see Fr. Neumann maybe two or three times a year. The same is true of most other people except those lucky few who happened to live south of 14^th Street, where there were a number of parishes flourishing.

What happened in the interim time? Three waves of immigrants. First the German Catholics to whom Fr Neumann was ministering. Then came the hordes and hordes of Irish escaping the famine in Ireland. And then the Italians. One group after another. Many of them bringing their priests with them so that the ranks of the clergy began to swell. And as the first generation turned into the second generation, some of those people began to offer their sons to the priesthood. It was, after all, a leg up in society. So that, by the second decade of the twentieth century, we were putting out 25 or 30 priests a year from our seminary. And that trend continued right through the end of the 1960s and then it began to go back the other way.

But that story matches almost point for point the description that Jesus gives to the 72 disciples before He sends them out. “Don’t take any money in your purse. Just travel the way everybody else travels. Find lodging where you can. Accept the food that’s given to you. Proclaim the gospel. And then move on.”

That number 72 is very interesting. It tells us what’s going on in Luke’s gospel, which was written close to 40 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. And at least 20 years after St. Paul wrote his letters and preached all around the Mediterranean area. The ancients thought that there were only 72 different races and ethnic groups in the world. Of course they’re wrong. The idea was, here go these people out into the whole world, eventually finding all 72 different kinds of people to tell about the great wonder of God’s salvation in Jesus.

Not the experience of Catholicism that we have had, is it? With a church in every town. And in the city, a church on every other street corner. Mass every morning. Five to ten Masses every Sunday.

There’s a difference between the sociology of religion and the doctrine of religion. What we have experienced is a unique late-19^th and 20^th century social kind of Catholicism, which never existed anywhere in the world before it existed here in America. The doctrine of the church says that the Eucharist, Holy Communion within the context of Mass, is the source and summit of the Christian life. What we hear when we hear that phrase is Holy Communion is the end-all and be-all of Catholic life. It’s not the same thing.

Summit and source are deliberately chosen words. The source of Christian life is what Jesus did at the Last Supper and then what they did to Him the next day, which He had symbolized the night before, and made present for us to carry with us into the future. That’s the source.

And, at Mass, we baptize converts. We bless the water of baptism. We consecrate the oils for the sick and for Confirmation and for the ordination of priests. We ordain priests at Mass. Almost all of our sacramental and spiritual life arises from the Mass. It’s the source.

The Mass and Eucharist is the summit toward which we move. That is to say, living a moral life, doing the right thing in the world in which we live, is a gift that we bring to God through the Eucharist on Sunday. Everything else we do leads back to the celebration of Mass, which memorializes and keeps present that dreadful gift of life and love that Jesus gave us. But that doesn’t mean that there necessarily has to be Mass everywhere all the time. It’s not the end-all and the be-all. It’s the source and the summit.

So what, then, is the end-all and be-all of Catholic life? It is our belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus. That’s why I asked you to listen for something that both Paul and Jesus said that was similar. Jesus says to the 72 when they come back, “Don’t get all excited because the demons obeyed you. You should be rejoicing because your names are written in heaven.” Twenty years before Luke wrote that about what Jesus said, Paul wrote, “I do not boast in anything except the cross of Jesus,” by which he meant the whole event – the Last Supper, the crucifixion, the resurrection the ascension - the whole event. “That’s what I rejoice in. That’s where my root is. That’s where my source is. I believe that God loved me so much that he sent His only Son to die for my salvation. And I rejoice in that.”

That’s what Jesus said to His disciples. “This is the real gift here. It’s not whether you can cure illnesses or drive out demons. It’s that you’ve been saved by the God who loves you more than you can possibly imagine.