Take Nothing for the Journey

“Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two...He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick –no food, no sack, no money in their belts.” Mark 6:7-8

When St. Francis of Assisi heard the gospel on taking nothing for the journey on Feb. 24, 1208, he was overjoyed. I can't imagine anyone being overjoyed at Jesus' instructions to the Twelve Apostles to go out preaching and to take nothing but a walking stick! But Saint Francis had been feeling the pull of God in dreams and visions, and he felt that this was the clear direction he had been seeking.

Although he had been a rich young man, with a taste for luxurious clothes and good food, he had renounced his possessions to the dismay of his father, and embarked on begging for food and for stones to rebuild a small church. Why did Jesus instruct them to bring nothing but a walking stick? 

In The Anawim Way, I read today, “This poverty is an integral part of their mission. Jesus requires them to go forth as poor men so that they will always remain aware that they are totally dependent on God. Whatever results they may achieve will not come through human means but through divine providence. Jesus is more concerned that His disciples be poor than that they be successful. Success in the eyes of the world is not a measure of value in the Kingdom of God, whereas poverty of spirit is the key to being a truly effective minister – even if the world pays no attention at all.”

Like Saint Francis, we too are pilgrims on a journey. We take different paths, but we go to the same God. We will all learn eventually that we need to take nothing on our journey. Everything will be left behind.

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose." (Jim Elliot, from his diary, Oct. 28, 1949)