Sent Like Sheep: The Radical Call of Matthew 10 and the Sorrowful Mother
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.”
— Matthew 10:16, RSV
There is a quiet sharpness to the words Jesus speaks in the tenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel. He gathers His disciples, not to comfort them, but to send them. He sends them empty of possessions, full of trust, and entirely surrendered to the will of the Father.
He gives them authority to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons. But just as importantly, He commands them to take nothing for the journey. Nothing. No gold, no silver, no sandals or staff. They are to travel light, utterly dependent on divine providence.
And this, perhaps, is the first lesson of discipleship: the Gospel is not carried by the strong, but by the surrendered.
Following Jesus Means Dying to Self
To follow Jesus is not simply to admire Him—it is to be conformed to Him, to embrace the narrow way of the Cross. He is honest about what this means:
“You will be hated by all for my name’s sake… Brother will deliver up brother to death… And a man’s foes will be those of his own household.”
(Matt 10:22, 21, 36)
These are not abstract warnings. They are painful realities for anyone who lives the Gospel with integrity. Christ prepares us for the day when our fidelity to Him may cost us peace in our families, or standing in our communities, or even our lives.
But He also offers a promise that quietly steadies the soul:
“The one who endures to the end will be saved.” (Matt 10:22)
The Call Is the Same for Us
What Jesus asks of the Twelve, He asks of us: To speak truth even when it costs. To remain faithful when we are rejected. To rely entirely on the Spirit when we have no words left to say.
“When they deliver you up, do not be anxious… for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Matt 10:19–20)
The disciple’s life is not a comfortable one. It is a cruciform life. But in that daily dying, something beautiful happens: we become worthy of friendship with Christ.
“Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me… Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matt 10:38–39)
In the Gulag and the Death Camp
This radical discipleship is not theoretical. In the 20th century, we saw its luminous reality in places of unspeakable suffering.
In Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, Christian prisoners, stripped of everything, found a strange and luminous freedom. Some of them, he writes, sang hymns quietly in their cells. Others forgave their torturers. Solzhenitsyn himself came to say:
“Bless you, prison, for having been in my life.”
And in the death camps of Auschwitz, St. Maximilian Kolbe lived Matthew 10 with breathtaking clarity. When a fellow prisoner was sentenced to death, Kolbe stepped forward and offered his life in exchange. He died after weeks of starvation and abuse, his last moments filled with prayer and song.
He did not die with bitterness, but with love. Because the Gospel had already claimed every part of him.
What About Us?
This is the uncomfortable but beautiful invitation:
To be faithful, not just in belief, but in action.
To trust, not in our strength, but in the presence of Christ with us.
To go where He sends us, even when it means rejection, loss, or isolation.
And yet, in this radical following, we are never alone. We are held by Christ, who has already walked this road ahead of us and who walks it still beside us.
Today’s Feast: Our Lady of Sorrows
Today the Church contemplates Our Lady of Sorrows—Mary, the Mother of Jesus, who stood at the foot of the Cross not with clenched fists, but with an open and pierced heart.
She did not preach, she did not flee, she did not resist the will of God. She simply remained with love, with fidelity, with suffering. Her discipleship was not a matter of words, but of total surrender. In Mary, we see the purest echo of Matthew 10. She bore no staff, no silver, no sandals. Her total trust and surrender was in the promise that God would bring life even through death.
“And a sword will pierce your own soul also.” (Luke 2:35)
That prophecy, spoken to her when Jesus was just a child, was fulfilled on Calvary. And still, she said yes. Still, she remained. Still, she believed.
Mary is not only the Mother of Jesus. The Blessed Mother is the model of the Church. The first and greatest disciple. In her, we find the quiet strength we need to walk this way of surrender, suffering, and steadfast love.
So if today you feel the cost of following Christ, and you find yourself misunderstood, rejected, or exhausted, go to Mary. She understands. She has walked this path before you. And she walks with you now.
And remember: she walked it with Jesus, the obedient Son, who did not flee from the Cross but embraced it in love. In Mary and Jesus, suffering is no longer senseless. Suffering becomes the path to union, the school of love, the doorway to resurrection.
2025, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.