I once had a retreatant come in to talk with me about the grace he was experiencing during the retreat. He described how he has spent most of his life as a believer, imagining that meant believing a set of truths and to perform a few Catholic duties like going to Mass on Sunday. He said he was for the first time experiencing two things. It all seemed like a relationship now. He was being loved by God mercifully, tenderly, personally. He was also experiencing something quite new – being called as a disciple – to make a difference in the world. HE felt called to do this even in his vocation in the professional world. The first reading and the gospel reminded me of him.
God loves us with affectionate love, no matter how we stray from that relationship. To accept that is a powerful experience for any of us. Jesus sends his disciples on mission simply to let people know how close he is to us. Their mission was to offer healing. They were not to worry about being rejected.
“Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” It is up to each of us to recall and embrace all that we have received. It is up to each of us to assess how we can give. Each of us carries our own set of burdens, crosses, wounds, patterns of temptation. If we feel blessed by tender, affectionate mercy, we can live not only with hearts full of gratitude. We can ask for the desire to respond in prayer, asking for the grace to be missioned to love, similar to the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled,
as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
May our Lord renew us in an experience of a loving relationship and show us our path in being his disciples in our every day lives.
Rev. Andy Alexander, SJ
Co-founder of Creighton’s Online Ministries, Retired 2025
I served at Creighton from 1996 to 2025. I served as Vice-president for Mission for three Presidents, directed the Collaborative Ministry Office and co-founded the Online Ministries website.
I loved seeing the number of faculty and staff who over the years really took up the mission as their own and made Creighton the Jesuit university it is today. I was also consoled to witness the website – a collaborative effort - touch the hearts of so many around the world.
I’m now living at St. Camillus – a Jesuit care facility in Milwaukee. Many of my days are spent dealing with my own health issues, as I carry out the mission we’ve been given, “to pray for the Church and the Society of Jesus.”
