Sunday, June 14, 2026·Liturgical Year A

11th Sunday of Ordinary TimeThe Harvest Is Abundant: Sending the Twelve

Gospel: Matthew 9:36–10:8

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Readings at a Glance

First Reading

Exodus 19:2-6a

Three months after the Exodus, Israel comes into the desert of Sinai and encamps in front of the mountain
Moses goes up to God, and the Lord calls to him from the mountain with words for "the house of Jacob." God first recalls what he has done — "You have seen… how I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself." Then comes the covenant offer: if Israel will "hearken to my voice and keep my covenant," they shall be the Lord's "treasured possession" (Hebrew segullah) among all peoples, for all the earth is his
More than that — "you shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." Israel's election is not privilege for its own sake but a priestly vocation on behalf of the whole world

Responsorial Psalm

Psalm 100:1-2, 3, 5

A psalm of jubilant thanksgiving sung as the people enter the Temple courts: "Come before him with joyful song." Its central confession matches the Gospel's governing image of the shepherd and the flock: "Know that the Lord is God; he made us, his we are; his people, the flock he tends." The refrain — "We are his people, the sheep of his flock" — gathers the assembly as exactly the sheep over whom Christ is "moved with pity" in the Gospel, the flock he refuses to leave shepherdless

Second Reading

Romans 5:6-11

Paul lays bare the heart of the gospel of grace
"While we were still helpless," he writes, "Christ died at the appointed time for the ungodly." One might barely find someone willing to die for a just person; "but God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us." The argument runs from the greater to the lesser: if reconciliation was accomplished while we were enemies, "through the death of his Son," how much more, "now that we have been justified by his blood," will we be saved through him
Paul ends not in anxiety but in exultation: "we also boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." The mission the Twelve are sent to announce rests on this prior gift — love offered before any merit of ours

Gospel

Matthew 9:36–10:8

As Jesus goes about the towns and villages teaching and healing, he looks out over the crowds and is "moved with pity" for them, "because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd." He turns to his disciples with a saying that becomes the charter of every Christian mission: "The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest." He then summons "his twelve disciples" and gives them "authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness." Matthew here names the Twelve, the only place in his Gospel where he calls them "apostles": Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew; James and John, the sons of Zebedee; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus; Simon the Cananean and Judas Iscariot, "who betrayed him." Jesus sends out these Twelve with a charge
For now they are not to go "into pagan territory" or enter "a Samaritan town," but rather to go "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Their proclamation is the very message Jesus himself preaches: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." And the works entrusted to them are the works of the kingdom — "Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons." The charge closes with the principle that governs all apostolic ministry: "Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give."

Before you read: Read this Sunday's full Mass readings at USCCB.org →

Key Themes7

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•"He was moved with pity for them" — mission is born not from strategy but from the compassion (splanchnizomai) of the Heart of Christ
•"Like sheep without a shepherd" — the crowds embody Ezekiel 34; Christ is the shepherd God promised to send in person
•"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few" — the first response to the shortage of laborers is not recruitment but prayer to "the master of the harvest"
•"He summoned his twelve disciples" — the Twelve are constituted as apostoloi, "those sent," the foundation of the Church on the pattern of the twelve tribes
•"The kingdom of heaven is at hand" — the apostles' message is identical to Jesus' own; they add nothing and subtract nothing
•"Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give" — dōrean: the gratuity of grace is the law of all apostolic ministry
•"A kingdom of priests, a holy nation" (Exod 19) — Israel's priestly vocation is fulfilled in the Church sent to the lost sheep and, ultimately, to all nations

Historical & Literary Context

The 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time returns the Church to the long "green" stretch of the liturgical year after the festal arc of Easter, Pentecost, Trinity, and Corpus Christi has closed. In Year A the Sunday Gospel is drawn from Matthew, and this passage stands at a structural hinge in that Gospel. Behind it lie chapters 5–9: the Sermon on the Mount (chs. 5–7), the first of Matthew's five great discourses, followed by a deliberately arranged cycle of miracle stories (chs. 8–9) showing the authority of the one whose teaching has just astonished the crowds. Ahead lies the Missionary Discourse (ch. 10), the second of the five discourses. Today's reading is precisely the seam that joins them — Jesus' compassion for the shepherdless crowd, the harvest saying, the call and naming of the Twelve, and the opening of the missionary charge. The lectionary stops at 10:8, before the harder counsel about persecution and division that follows. The immediate setting is given in the summary verse just before our passage (9:35), which deliberately echoes 4:23 almost word for word — Jesus "teaching… proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease." This repetition forms an inclusio framing everything from the Sermon to the tenth miracle: the reader has now seen both the words and the works of the Messiah. At 9:36 the camera pulls back to the crowds, and the focus shifts from what Jesus does to what he will now empower others to do. The mission of the Twelve is not a new program; it is the extension of Jesus' own ministry into the hands of those he sends. The Greek of these verses is unusually vivid. In 9:36 Jesus is "moved with pity" — ἐσπλαγχνίσθη (esplanchnisthē), from σπλάγχνα (splanchna), the inward organs; it names not a passing sentiment but a compassion felt in the gut. The crowds are "troubled and abandoned" — ἐσκυλμένοι (eskylmenoi, harassed, torn, worn down) and ἐρριμμένοι (errimmenoi, thrown down, flung aside, prostrate) — "like sheep without a shepherd," a phrase that carries the whole weight of Numbers 27:17, 1 Kings 22:17, and especially Ezekiel 34, the great oracle against Israel's failed shepherds. The "harvest" is θερισμός (therismos), an image with an eschatological edge: the harvest is the in-gathering at the end of the age (cf. 13:39). And the verb for "send out laborers" is ἐκβάλῃ (ekbalē, from ἐκβάλλω) — the same forceful verb used three verses later for "driving out" unclean spirits. The Lord must thrust laborers into the harvest; vocation is not a casual recruitment but a holy compulsion. Two further words anchor the passage theologically. At 10:2 Matthew calls the Twelve "apostles" — ἀπόστολοι (apostoloi), "those who are sent" — the only occurrence of the noun in the whole of Matthew, placed exactly at the moment of their commissioning, so that the title is defined by the act. And the charge closes at 10:8 with δωρεάν (dōrean), "as a gift, gratis, without payment": "Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give." The gratuity of grace is to be mirrored in the gratuity of mission. On authorship and date, modern Catholic scholarship places the Gospel of Matthew around AD 80–90, written in Greek by a Jewish-Christian author (drawing on Mark and the sayings source Q) for a community living in tension with the post-70 synagogue, traditionally located at Antioch in Syria. Daniel J. Harrington, SJ (The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina 1, pp. 138–145) reads 9:36–10:8 as Matthew's careful construction of the Twelve as the nucleus of the restored people of God. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison (Matthew, ICC, vol. 2, pp. 147–180) note that Matthew has gathered the mission material from Mark 6 and Q into a single, programmatic discourse, and that the apostle list reflects very early tradition. Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, ch. 5) argues that the broad agreement of the four New Testament lists of the Twelve, despite minor variation in the lesser-known names, points to their stability as a fixed and remembered group from the earliest days. Pope Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth (vol. 1, ch. 6, "The Disciples"), reads the choosing of the Twelve against the background of the twelve tribes: in calling exactly twelve, Jesus enacts the eschatological restoration of Israel and founds the new People of God.

Commentary

"He Was Moved with Pity" — Compassion as the Origin of Mission

The passage opens not with a command but with an emotion: Jesus, seeing the crowds, "was moved with pity." The Greek esplanchnisthē locates that pity in the σπλάγχνα, the inward organs — the visceral, bodily compassion that the Gospels reserve almost exclusively for Jesus himself (and for the father in the parable of the prodigal son, and the Samaritan, both figures of God). Matthew is careful: the mission of the Church does not begin with a plan, a need, or an institution. It begins in the Heart of Christ confronted by human misery. Pope Francis returns to this verse repeatedly, insisting that evangelization that does not flow from compassion becomes proselytism or management; the missionary disciple is first someone who has let the gaze of Christ over the shepherdless crowd become their own.

"Like Sheep Without a Shepherd" — Ezekiel 34 Fulfilled

The crowds are "troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd." The phrase is not casual. It recalls Moses' prayer that the Lord would not leave the assembly "like sheep without a shepherd" (Num 27:17), and Micaiah's vision of leaderless Israel (1 Kgs 22:17). Above all it evokes Ezekiel 34, where God denounces the shepherds of Israel who fed themselves and let the flock scatter, and then makes a promise: "I myself will look after and tend my sheep… I will appoint one shepherd over them to pasture them, my servant David." Matthew shows that promise being kept before the reader's eyes: the compassion of Jesus is the divine Shepherd come in person to gather the scattered flock. The Catechism (§754) takes up this very image — the Church is "the flock of which God himself foretold he would be the shepherd."

"The Harvest Is Abundant but the Laborers Are Few"

The shepherd image gives way at once to the harvest image — θερισμός, a word that elsewhere in Matthew (13:39) names the eschatological in-gathering at the close of the age. The crowds are not merely needy; they are ripe. And the Lord's prescription for the shortage of laborers is striking: not a recruitment drive but a prayer — "ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest." The harvest belongs to God, the laborers are his to send, and the Church's first act in the face of every vocations crisis is to beg the Lord of the harvest. The verb for "send out," ἐκβάλλω, is forceful — to thrust out, the same word used for driving out demons in the next breath — a reminder that a true vocation has the character of being seized and propelled, not merely volunteering.

"He Summoned His Twelve" — Apostolos and the Foundation of the Church

At 10:1-2 the disciples become, for the only time in Matthew, "the twelve apostles." The noun ἀπόστολος means simply "one who is sent," and Matthew defines the title by the act it names: an apostle exists by being commissioned. The number twelve is deliberate and theological — it mirrors the twelve tribes of Israel, so that in choosing exactly twelve, Jesus signals that he is founding the renewed and gathered People of God. Lumen Gentium (§§18–20, Vatican II, November 21, 1964) teaches that the Lord "set the blessed Peter over the other apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity," and that the bishops are the successors of the apostles in this pastoral office. The Catechism (§§857–860) draws the line forward: the Church is apostolic because she is "built on the foundation of the apostles," hands on their teaching, and continues to be taught and sanctified by them through their successors.

The Naming of the Twelve — Including the Tax Collector and the Betrayer

Matthew's list is sober and unsparing. It includes "Matthew the tax collector" — the evangelist, by tradition, naming himself with the despised trade he was called from at 9:9, two scenes earlier — and it ends with "Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him." The Church Christ founds is not a company of the worthy but of the called; it carries within it from the first day both the redeemed sinner and the one who will betray. John Chrysostom, preaching on this passage (Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 32), marvels that the Lord entrusts the highest authority — over disease, death, and demons — to fishermen and a tax collector, "men of no mark," precisely so that the power at work in the mission would be unmistakably God's and not their own.

"Go to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel" — The Order of Salvation History

The charge restricts the first mission: not yet to "pagan territory" or "a Samaritan town," but to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." This is not nationalism but the order of salvation history — the gospel is offered first to the people of the covenant, in fulfillment of the promises made to them. The restriction is provisional, and Matthew tells the same Gospel that ends with the universal commission of 28:19, "Go… and make disciples of all nations." The "lost sheep of the house of Israel" of chapter 10 become, by the last chapter, all the nations; the priestly people of Exodus 19 is opened to the whole world. The homilist should hold the two together: Israel first, and then, through Israel, the world.

"Without Cost You Have Received; Without Cost You Are to Give"

The charge closes with δωρεάν — gratis, as a free gift. Everything the apostles have — the gospel they preach, the authority they wield, their very calling — was received without payment, and so it must be given without payment. Pope John Paul II made this verse the lodestar of his great missionary encyclical Redemptoris Missio (December 7, 1990), insisting (§§1, 11) that mission springs from the superabundance of a gift received: "the Church… cannot fail to proclaim the Gospel… freely she has received, freely she must give." Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium (November 24, 2013, §§24, 264), names the same gratuity as the soul of the "missionary disciple," who evangelizes not from duty or pressure but from the overflow of having been loved first — which is precisely the gospel of the day's second reading.

Linking the First Reading to the Gospel

Exodus 19:2-6a is the foundational charter of Israel's election. At Sinai God makes the people his "treasured possession" (segullah) and gives them a vocation: "a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." That status was never meant as privilege closed in on itself; a priestly people exists to stand between God and the world on the world's behalf. In the Gospel, Jesus begins to realize that vocation in a new key — he constitutes the Twelve, the seed of the renewed Israel, and sends them out to gather the lost sheep. Lumen Gentium (§9) applies the Exodus text directly to the Church, "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation" (citing 1 Pet 2:9, which itself quotes Exod 19). The priestly people of Sinai and the apostolic mission of Galilee are two moments of one divine plan.

Linking the Second Reading to the Gospel

Romans 5:6-11 supplies the theological ground beneath the whole Gospel scene. Why is Jesus "moved with pity"? Why does he die "for the ungodly," "while we were still sinners"? Because, as Paul says, "God proves his love for us" not in response to our worthiness but in spite of our enmity. The compassion that sends the Twelve is the same love that will send the Son to the Cross "at the appointed time." And the gratuity of 10:8 — "without cost you have received" — is simply the missionary echo of Romans 5: we were reconciled while we were enemies, justified by his blood as a sheer gift, so the only fitting response is to give as freely as we have received. The mission flows from grace, and grace flows from the love of God poured out before we asked.

A Note for the Homilist

This is a vocation Sunday in everything but name. The temptation is to preach it only as a clergy-and-religious appeal; the deeper reading is that the whole Church, the priestly people of Exodus 19, is the laborer the harvest is short of. Two phrases will carry the homily: "moved with pity," and "without cost you have received; without cost you are to give." The first roots mission in the Heart of Christ rather than in anxiety about decline; the second roots it in gratitude rather than guilt. Consider naming concretely, before this particular assembly, where the shepherdless crowds are today — and inviting the congregation, before anything else, to do the one thing Jesus actually commands in this passage: to pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.

Living the Gospel This Week

- For the homilist: Anchor the homily in the two governing phrases — "moved with pity" and "without cost you have received; without cost you are to give." Let the first define why the Church evangelizes (compassion, not panic) and the second define how (gratitude, not obligation). Resist reducing the passage to a vocations-office appeal; the laborer the harvest lacks is the whole baptized people - For the parish: Note that the Lord's own first remedy for "few laborers" is corporate prayer to "the master of the harvest." Consider introducing or renewing a regular parish prayer for vocations — to priesthood, religious life, marriage, and lay mission — as the direct, literal obedience this Gospel asks - For the laity: Exodus 19 and Lumen Gentium §9 name every baptized person part of "a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." Ask where, this week, you stand between God and the people around you — at work, in the family, among the "troubled and abandoned." The mission to the lost sheep is handed to the ordained and the lay alike - For families: Read the names of the Twelve aloud at the table. Point out that the list includes "Matthew the tax collector" and ends with the betrayer — the Church Christ founds is made of called sinners, not the already-worthy. It is good news for every imperfect family that God builds his work out of people like us - For personal prayer: Sit this week with the single line "he was moved with pity." Let Christ's compassionate gaze over the shepherdless crowd rest first on you, and then ask to see one person in your own life with that same compassion, and to do one concrete thing about it - For the Eucharist as fulfillment of the Gospel's promise: "Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give" is realized at the altar. At every Mass the Church receives, as sheer gift, the Body and Blood of the Shepherd who was moved with pity, and is then sent — Ite, missa est, "Go, the Mass is sent" — to give freely what she has freely received. Communion and mission are one movement: fed by the Lord of the harvest, the flock becomes his laborers

Sources & Further Reading

New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE), Matthew 9:36–10:8; Exodus 19:2-6a; Romans 5:6-11; Psalm 100:1-2, 3, 5 — United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011
Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 541–553 (Jesus and the Kingdom; the choosing of the Twelve), §§ 857–865 (the Church is apostolic), § 754 (the Church as flock and sheepfold), § 2611 (prayer for laborers)
Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), §§ 9–10 (the priestly People of God, citing Exod 19:6 / 1 Pet 2:9) and §§ 18–20 (the apostles and their successors), November 21, 1964
Second Vatican Council, Ad Gentes (Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity), §§ 1–5, December 7, 1965
Second Vatican Council, Apostolicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity), §§ 2–3, November 18, 1965
Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio (Encyclical on the Permanent Validity of the Church's Missionary Mandate), December 7, 1990, §§ 1–11
Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today's World), November 24, 2013, §§ 19–24, 264–268 (the missionary disciple and gratuity)
John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily 32 (on Matthew 9:27–10:15, including the harvest saying and the sending of the Twelve), NPNF Series I, vol. 10, c. AD 390
Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea on Matthew 9–10, compiling the Fathers on the call and sending of the Twelve, 1262–1268
Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina 1, Liturgical Press, 1991, pp. 135–148
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, ICC, vol. 2, T&T Clark, 1991, pp. 147–180
Brendan Byrne, SJ, Romans, Sacra Pagina 6, Liturgical Press, 1996, pp. 165–178 (on Rom 5:6-11)
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, SJ, Romans, Anchor Bible vol. 33, Doubleday, 1993, pp. 395–408
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Eerdmans, 2006, ch. 5 ("The Twelve")
Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1, ch. 6 ("The Disciples"), Doubleday, 2007

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