NOTES for Mar 6:7-13
The Lord sends His disciples on their apostolic mission. He sends them in pairs. Why precisely in pairs? Theophylact of Bulgaria points us to the book of Ecclesiastes: “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him” (Eccl 4:9-10). This is very important for our understanding. Two people. Of course, one immediately recalls the words: where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I among them (Matt 18:20). These words prefigure the church, parish, and community; they indicate plurality, precisely two or three, as if beginning the sequence of natural numbers, followed by a comma and an ellipsis. But the Lord sends precisely two people. It does not say “two or three,” but clearly “two by two,” and this dyad must also correspond to some reality of our life. We can offer the following explanation, without insisting on it; it simply occurred to us. Here we see an image of a person and his spiritual father. This form of standing together before the Lord is very often difficult to grasp precisely for educated, intellectual people who are therefore self-sufficient. Of course they need fellowship like everyone else, and their self-sufficiency finds expression within it, so they readily form a parish or community. Yet the sacrament of confession often becomes an insurmountable obstacle for them. There a person and his spiritual father stand together before God and discern the paths of their apostolic mission, for to some extent that mission must invariably be shared by the spiritual father and his spiritual child. If one makes a mistake, someone must be able to view it from outside and point it out in time. In essence, we go through this life as people sent by the Lord on an apostolic mission, and someone must be beside us. But one might object that the apostles went as equals, whereas there is inequality between a spiritual father and his child, since the former directs the latter. First, even within each pair of apostles someone most likely emerged as the elder. Second, this inequality conflicts with the words: call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven (Matt 23:9). Both points must be accepted despite their apparent contradiction. The words mentioned above about two or three and today’s words about two people seem to address different spheres of our experience of life in God: the experience of community and the experience of a relationship with a spiritual father. They enrich rather than contradict each other. There are also passages in which the Lord calls us to stand before Him alone, and you all know them well. This third aspect would complete the picture, but that is not what we are discussing now. Another relatively difficult point to understand is why they were to remain in one house. Theophylact of Bulgaria explains it this way: “He commands them to remain in one house so that people will not think they move from place to place for the sake of gluttony, wandering from one host to another.” Yet this is a local and historical meaning; surely there is another meaning here as well. Perhaps that meaning is trust in God, seeing His guiding hand behind events in life that seem accidental. If you have come to this house, then the Lord has brought you to this house and you must remain faithful to His providence. If the Lord has led you to this church and this parish, then that is what He willed; when we begin to wander and seek something better, we are guided exclusively by our own will.