Dear Sisters, dear brethren in Christ, in that Gospel passage which we have just heard, St Matthew tells us how twelve disciples (of whom he was one) became twelve apostles. What is the difference? It is not immediately obvious why these two words were used right back from the beginning, but today’s passage goes a long way to helping us understand the meaning of this change of name.
In the first place, disciple is a Latin word translating a Greek word ‘mathetes’ meaning a ‘pupil’, one who learns from a teacher. No one is described simply as a disciple in the abstract. You might be a student in the abstract, such as a student of history or of theology, which you can do on your own as an academic, but that is not the same as being a disciple or pupil, because being a disciple definitely requires someone to whom the pupil looks for teaching and guidance. In this case, the disciples mentioned in all the Gospels are followers of our Lord’s teaching. They claim allegiance to Him personally. He is the teacher, or ‘magister’, a Latin word that gives us the English words ‘master’ and ‘magistrate’.
For His disciples, our Lord was certainly their teacher, their master, their magistrate or lawgiver. For Jesus clearly taught them that He is their only teacher and master; ‘call no one on earth your teacher – for you have only one teacher, the Christ’. So the disciples are all those who accept our Lord’s unique role as teacher. To them He was indeed not just any teacher, but, as so many others also recognised, ‘one who taught with authority, not like the scribes’, who were the trained interpreters of the religious law of the Jewish people. Jesus, on the other hand, was not ‘trained’ in any school for rabbis, but nonetheless was able to teach with authority because He showed His authority over demons, over sickness and over death. One who could heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons undoubtedly had authority to teach, ‘for no one could do these deeds that [He] did unless God were with Him’, as Nicodemus says in St John’s Gospel.
St Matthew, at the beginning of today’s passage, mentions the ‘twelve disciples’ whom Jesus called to His side. These were not the only disciples. Since the word means a pupil, one who trusts Jesus as a teacher, we know there were many of them. St Luke talks about seventy disciples on another occasion. St John mentions that Nicodemus was ‘a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews’. So anyone who accepted Jesus’s authority as ‘a teacher come from God’ is a disciple. And as our Lord said later in the same chapter of the Gospel that we have just heard: ‘it is enough for a disciple to be like his teacher, and a servant like his master.’
So in this sentence we learn what our Lord Himself looks for in anyone who claims to be a disciple of His. First of all, we must carefully and thoroughly learn what He teaches. Secondly, we must put it into effect. It is not enough simply to know what He says we must do and then not do it. That would be utterly wrong and reprehensible. So therefore, we owe obedience to Him in all that He teaches us about God, about ourselves and about our neighbours.
Then we come to the word ‘apostle’. This is the actual Greek word itself, adopted into Latin and thence into English, meaning one ‘ who is sent out with a mission’. Our Lord sent many people out on various missions, like the seventy disciples I mentioned a moment ago. But these do not get named Apostles. The ones who are named Apostles in the Gospels are twelve in number, no more and no less. This number was specifically chosen by our Lord in order that they could represent the twelve tribes of the people of Israel, meaning the entire assembly of the nation. The Twelve apostles are ‘sent out’ and we hear today just how our Lord does that, with explicit directions to whom and with what intention. We note especially that, unlike the seventy disciples sent out on a mission, Jesus sends out the twelve with something far greater: He sends them out with power; as well as instructing them to go only to those whom He calls ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’, He instructs them to proclaim ‘the Kingdom of heaven is close at hand’, and to ‘heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers and cast out demons.’
So we learn here that although the twelve are certainly among the entire group of those who follow our Lord and accept Him as teacher, the disciples, they are far more than just a small group within the disciples as a whole; they are specially empowered. Moreover, they will be given even greater authority and power at the Last Supper when our Lord will add to today’s list of powers that of changing bread and wine into His Body and Blood and offering these in sacrifice to the Father on behalf of all the body of disciples whom we call the Church.
This is why we call the Church; ‘one, holy, Catholic and apostolic’, because she lives in the world by the exercise of Christ’s own authority which He did not give to all His disciples, but only to the Twelve. They in turn shared the same power and authority with those whom they chose, as St Paul (chosen personally by Christ at Damascus) himself chose St Timothy and St Titus, appointing them as sharers in his apostolic authority by the laying on of hands, as we heard in the readings at Mass just over a week ago. Only the Apostles and their successors, the Bishops, have the authority to do those things we read about in the Gospel. And the bishops in turn hand on their full share in the authority of Christ to other bishops by ordination, and also with priests, who have a partial share in the same authority to celebrate Mass, to forgive sins, to heal the sick and to teach the faithful what they themselves have learned from the one Master, the one Rabbi, Christ Himself. That is how Christ made provision for the Church to continue throughout all ages and throughout the world.
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