The gospel passage for today's Mass is taken from the section of John's gospel where the gathering of Jesus with his disciples on the night of the Last Supper is recounted. Even in those precious final moments of his earthly life, Jesus was still encouraging his disciples to understand and to cultivate a heart of service within themselves: No slave is greater than his master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him (Jn 13: 16).
In these words, the Lord was warning his disciples - and that includes all of us who are his modern-day disciples - that we should strive never to become puffed up with our own egos to the point of forgetting the mission that the Lord has entrusted to us: to proclaim the joy of the gospel in all circumstances.
Evidence of the proclamation, and the joy that was in the hearts of those first disciples can be seen in the first reading for today's Mass, taken from the Acts of the Apostles. Having completed their journey from Paphos to Perga and then returning to Antioch, where the Christian community was based, Paul - yes, that's the same Saul who had been persecuting the earliest followers of Jesus - stood up in the midst of the synagogue assembly and spoke eloquently about the history of God's continual presence among his people, leading up to the figure of John the Baptist (Acts 13: 13-25). More details of this speech will be recounted in the coming days, but already we can imagine the passion and conviction with which Paul spoke. This passion and conviction were born out of his own encounter with the risen Jesus.
The same must always be true for us. In everything we do, we must always aim to serve the Lord and we must pray for the grace to always do so with the passion and conviction that we first knew when we ourselves were called to follow Him.
Have a great day.
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