SENT to Do God’s Work

July 6, 2025 – Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070625.cfm)

To those who are in one way or another involved with apostolic work and in church ministry, a well-known Jesuit spiritual director Thomas Green once emphasized that there is a big difference between working for God and doing God’s work. Though working for God and doing God’s work are both noble and good as well as might mean the same, the difference lies on the doer, worker, or actor of the ministry.

Working for God is based from OUR own initiative and creativity. It is service-done designed according to our own will so that God and others will be pleased with us. God and others then, becomes a passive recipient of our good works.

However, doing God’s work is based (not on our own but) on God’s own initiative and creativity. It is service-done, patterned according (not to our own will but) to God’s will and done in partnership and collaboration with God. Here, God is the author and actor of the good works done. We become then mere participants and instruments of God’s work as well as all will be the beneficiaries of God’s work.

Simply put, working for God is OUR work for God, whereas Doing God’s work is GOD’s work for us & done with Us.

Our Gospel today highlights our identity & responsibilities as missionaries of Christ. Like his disciples, as today’s Christians, we are reminded that we are authorized, empowered & commissioned to “proclaim the Kingdom of God & to heal the sick”. It is our mission then to proclaim & give witness to our faith in the world. As faithfuls & followers of Christ, we are thus God’s missionaries & ministers to the world today.

What is more significant in our mission as Christians is the specific instruction of Jesus of “take nothing (no money bag, no sack, no sandals) for the journey” – This would mean as we are sent, go, & do our mission of Proclaiming Christ & giving witness to God’s kingdom to the world today, we are come & go as we are (blessed & broken we may be, warts & all) for what we proclaim is not ourselves but God himself.

We are to learn to trust, practice detachment & rely on God’s will, plans & ways – not on ourselves, for God’s offer of salvation is based on His graces & blessings rather than on our human endeavors & merits.

In other words, we are sent (not only to work for God, but) to do God’s work in the world through us. Yes, in whatever vocation & profession we are in in this life, we are on-mission to the world, but not just to work for God, but to do God’s work & mission with us, for in Christ & with us Christians, God is still on mission & at work in world for our better lives.

On this note, we consider that our Catholic bishops exhorts during 1991 2^nd Plenary Council of the Philippines, that as today’s Filipino Catholics, we “need to retell the Jesus story to ourselves so that we can tell Him to other with authority”. Meaning, it is our mission as Filipino Catholics now to tell the Jesus’ story again & again, and  anew to ourselves so that we can proclaim & minister Him to others. It is for God then, not for us to change & save the world & others. It is for us to strengthen our faith in Jesus now & so others here at home and abroad may come to know & witness Jesus in us, who believes & follows Him.

As we do our part in God’s work, our day-to-day life in faith with Christ challenges us to be more in sync & at tune with God’s will, plan, & ways of leading & guiding us, rather than insist our own plans, will & ways for what is best for us in our lives nowadays.

May we grow in our missionary life & be worthy of our missionary identity as Filipino Catholics.

So Help us God. So may It be. Amen.