What Jesus has word disciples, students apprentices. And the according to St. Luke.,
Jesus departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God. When day came, he called his disciples to himself, and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles
How many disciples there were by this point in Jesus’s ministry? We have no idea. What we are told, in the very same reading, is that after the selection of the 12 he gathered with a “great crowd of disciples”. Do we ever stop to think about the ones who were no chosen? How much grumbling and jealousy was going on in that crowd as they saw who got chosen? We humans are fragile creatures; our insecurities easily provoked. And certainly by this time there were other disciples who could name all the defects in the 12 that were chosen.
That fact that Jesus spent all night praying over the decision says that it was not an easy one. When was the last time any of us stayed up all night praying over a decision?
In the last few years we have gone from anger over abusive priests to anger over, not only abusive bishops, but bishops who knew about and participated in the cover up of abuse by others. Even now there appears to be a great inequality in the way cases are handled. A priest is accused and instantly suspended. A Bishop is accused and he cuts back on his public appearances.
Some people seek facile solutions. Do any of us think elections would guarantee better candidates? Just look at our top politicians.
But perhaps today’s gospel is a call for prayerful discernment by the entire body of Christ, a time for us to pray with the intensity that Jesus prayed that He will pour out on the Church a Spirit of Wisdom so that we might know how we can transform our present system into one that will produce, not perfect, but better leadership. Presently, bishops are nominated by bishops and so the system itself all but guarantees more of the same.
We will never know precisely what criteria Jesus used in choosing His twelve. St. Paul provides us with his thoughts but they are pretty basic. What we do know is that the process cannot simply be a step by step climbing of the ladder. Pope Francis has for quite some time decried that system. It must include prolonged prayer.
Let us pray for a system that will provide the leadership that God knows will be best for the Church in the 21st century.
