You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have
Julián Carrón - Everything we have heard can be reduced to the description of a mechanism: Jesus “called the twelve disciples to him and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to heal every disease.” Many times, however, we see that the disciples reduce their task to what has been given to them. When things do not go according to their plan, as often happens in the Gospel, they react in a totally different way: they want to call down fire on the Samaritans because they do not listen to them, send away the children because they are disturbing them, or worry only about the first places in the synagogues, arguing about who will be the first among them. It is all a mechanism that, in the end, is far removed from what Jesus is trying to show them.
Because God's method is anything but a mechanism! The Gospel of Matthew does not emphasize a fundamental aspect that Mark's Gospel does, because Matthew, as we have heard, provides a very concise description. Mark, on the other hand, recounts that Jesus called them first to be with Him, and then to send them out to preach and fulfill this mission.
Why does Jesus—through this method—choose them to be with Him?
For what we have heard so many times from Don Giussani: “No one begets unless he is begotten.” He said, “One cannot be only a leader, a responsible person, and have no one as a father. One cannot be a father, a begetter, if he has no one as a father. Not if he ‘did not have’ but if he ‘does not have’ anyone as a father. Because if he has no one as a father, it means that it is not an event; it is not a generation. ‘Generation is a present act.’”¹ Therefore, we have heard it said: “No one begets unless he is begotten.”
¹ L. Giussani, “La gioia, la letizia e l’audacia,” in “Parola tra noi,” Tracce, June 1997.
For this reason, today's Gospel reading is not merely a description of a mechanism but a permanent method for every moment of history. We can participate in Jesus' mission only if we allow ourselves to be constantly generated by what we have encountered; otherwise, we will not be able to generate in turn.
What a grace it is to recognize that generation is solely a “present act”! It is not our voluntarism or our performance: it is simply a matter of constantly welcoming what generates us, so that we can, in turn, bear witness to what has been given to us. We can communicate to others the superabundance we receive.
Excerpt from the Homily of Julián Carrón Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time—Year A, July 9, 2025. Unrevised notes by the author.
(First reading: Gen 41:55-57; 42:5-7a, 17-24a; Psalm: 33; Gospel: Mt 10:1-7)
