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Jesus’ frustration in today’s Gospel reading is obvious— “You got it, but you didn’t get it!” The crowd is basically saying, “We’re back!” And Jesus is saying, “But why?”

I write this because of the ancient principle of the Church: Lex orandi, lex credenda: the way we pray reveals the “what” in which we believe. If we cannot worship together, do we believe together? And is there any more important way of worship (spoiler alert: no) than our celebration of the Eucharist?

This weekend is the “prelude,” so to speak, of the 5-Sunday “interlude” into our Cycle from Mark, when we add 5 Sundays’ worth of the Gospel of John, chapter 6—the “Bread of Life” discourse. We do this, in part, because Mark’s Gospel is too short to cover all of a year’s worth of “Ordinary Time.” But there’s more to it than that, especially for us this year.

There cannot possibly be a better Gospel reading for Missionary Co-op Sunday than today’s, with Jesus sending the disciples out, two-by-two, to prepare the way for His own preaching visits. They were to “take nothing for the journey” (a passage that deeply impacted Francis of Assisi). But in fact they did take something critical for the journey: the authority Jesus gave them—no small item!

The words of this title have “baggage”—they carry connotations that can be positive or negative, based on context. This weekend is a good time to explore the intricacies of grammar and meaning, at least in terms of these words.