Daily Gospel Reflection – Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
October 7, 2023
Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
Gospel: Lk 10:17-24
The seventy-two disciples returned rejoicing and said to Jesus,
"Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name."
Jesus said, "I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.
Behold, I have given you the power
'to tread upon serpents' and scorpions
and upon the full force of the enemy
and nothing will harm you.
Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you,
but rejoice because your names are written in heaven."
At that very moment he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said,
"I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to the childlike.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows who the Son is except the Father,
and who the Father is except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him."
Turning to the disciples in private he said,
"Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.
For I say to you,
many prophets and kings desired to see what you see,
but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it."
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus equips his disciples for defeating the devil. And the Lord continues to empower them for spiritual warfare.
We are reminded that the battle is not simply with flesh and blood, and not merely on the psychological or political stage, when Jesus says to the chief of his Apostles: “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail.”
That the new-born Church will be in for a fight becomes clear in the surprising words of Jesus: “But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one.” He is setting up a contrast between these instructions and those that he gave them when he sent them on their missionary way earlier in the Gospel.
In giving the first set of directives—carry no bag, no traveling staff, no sandals, etc.—he was encouraging in them an attitude of radical dependency upon God; in giving the second—including the recommendation to carry a sword—he is readying them for a struggle.
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