He granted them power: the twelve apostles and Mary, Mother of the Church

Quote:> “And when you call upon these twelve disciples, he gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every sickness and every illness.” (Matthew 10:1)Chapter 10 of Matthew:Chapter 10 of Matthew is the second in a series of five major discourses in the Gospel, known as the missionary discourse, and it begins with the foundational act of apostleship: Jesus gathers the twelve disciples, gives them authority, lists their names, and sends them forth on mission. The structure is threefold: the gift of authority (Matthew 10:1), the listing of names (Matthew 10:2-4), and the missionary instructions (Matthew 10:5-42). This episode is one of the most foundational in all of Matthew’s ecclesiology: it is the first time Matthew uses the term “apostle” (Matthew 10:2), the first time the twelve are sent out as a group, and the moment when Jesus’ mission begins to be shared by others.The Number Twelve:The number twelve is not arbitrary; it corresponds to the twelve tribes of Israel, revealing Jesus’ intention to re-constitute God’s people, not as a political nation but as a community of mission. The twelve apostles are the pillars of the new Israel that Jesus is establishing, a escatological sign that God’s promise to the twelve tribes is being fulfilled in a new way. In Matthew 19:28, Jesus explicitly states that the twelve will sit on twelve thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel; the apostolic office has an eschatological dimension that transcends their immediate mission of traveling through Galilee’s villages.I. “He gave them power”: The Delegated Authority“He gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every sickness and every illness” (Matthew 10:1). The authority Jesus gives to the twelve is precisely the same authority He exercised in chapters 8-9: healing illnesses, casting out demons. The mission of the twelve is not an imitation of Jesus’ mission; it is a participation in it, with the same authority. Jesus is not creating substitutes for when He is absent; He is multiplying His effective presence through others.The delegation of authority in Matthew 10:1 forms the theological foundation for the sacrament of Ordination. Bishops, as successors to the Apostles, and priests and deacons, as collaborators with the bishops, exercise authority delegated by Jesus to the twelve and passed down through apostolic succession. The phrase “he gave them power” (dedit illis potestatem) in Matthew 10:1 is the first formal act of this chain of delegation that continues to the present day; the authority to preach, heal, absolve, and consecrate has its source in Jesus’ gift of power to the twelve.The logic of delegated authority is crucial for understanding the nature of Christian mission: the apostles do not act under their own authority but under the authority they received from Jesus. The missionary does not own the message he proclaims; he bears a message received. He does not heal by his own power; he acts in the power of Christ entrusted to him. This distinction between the personal authority of the apostle and the authority of Christ that he exercises in another’s name is what the early Church called “ex opere operato” in the sacraments: the effectiveness of the sacrament does not depend on the holiness of the minister but on the authority of Christ acting through him and by him.Mary received a unique form of participation in the mission of Jesus, not the apostolic delegation of public preaching, but the maternal and intercessory mission that is inseparable from the mission of the Son. Her divine motherhood, being the Mother of God, is itself a form of “potestatem” received: not the authority to preach or heal, but the authority to present the world with the Savior, to intercede with the Son, to be for the Church the Mother that Jesus himself gave her on the Cross (“Behold your Mother,” Jn 19:27).

II. The list of the twelve: the diversity of the apostolate

“The names of the twelve apostles are: first, Simon, called Peter, and his brother Andrew. James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John. Philip and Bartholomew. Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector. James, son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus. Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariotes, who betrayed him” (Mt 10:2-4). The list includes a fisherman who becomes a stone (Peter), a tax collector (Matthew), a zealot (Simon, part of a political-religious movement resisting Rome), and a traitor (Judas). The diversity is radical: the twelve include social classes, temperaments, and tragically, the future traitor.The presence of Judas on the list is a fact that Matthew does not soften: “Judas Iscariotes, who betrayed him,” the traitor is mentioned as an apostle, receives the same sending, the same authority, the same instructions. The betrayal of Judas does not invalidate his apostolate, it confirms the freedom with which Jesus chose his apostles: he included the one he knew would betray, without thereby excluding him from the list of sent ones. The fragility of human apostolate, which includes a traitor among the twelve, is part of the mystery of the Church that the Lord founded.The diversity of the twelve anticipates the diversity of the universal Church: the apostolate is not the property of any social, ethnic, or cultural group. Peter and Andrew were Galilean fishermen. Matthew was a tax collector in Roman administration. Simon the Zealot was a political activist resisting Rome. That these two, the collaborator with Roman power and the resistor, were part of the same apostolic group was in itself a escatological sign: in Christ, political and social divisions are overcome by the common mission.The list of the twelve in Matthew ends with the name of Judas “who betrayed him,” the only apostle identified by his betrayal, not by his origin or profession. This detail is pastorally important: the Church that Jesus founded is not a community of perfect ones but a community of sent ones that includes the weak and unfaithful. The betrayal of Judas is not hidden or minimized in the apostolic tradition: it is part of the honesty with which the Church narrates its own origins, founded on Jesus’ free choice, which included human fragility in his own apostolic college.

III. “Go first to the lost sheep of Israel”: the sequence of the mission

“To these twelve, Jesus sent, giving them these instructions: ‘Do not go into pagan countries or enter any city of the Samaritans. Instead, preferentially go to the lost sheep of the House of Israel'” (Mt 10:5-6). The instruction to restrict the immediate mission of the twelve to Israel clashes with the universal mandate of Mt 28:19. The tension is real and has been much debated: Jesus here limits the immediate mission of the twelve to Israel, but promises a universal mission to all nations in His resurrection. The most coherent explanation is that the salvific order is “first to the Jew, then to the Greek” (Rom 1:16): Israel has priority in the historical mission of Jesus at this time, but the universal mission is already foreshadowed from the beginning.

“Lost sheep of the House of Israel,” the same vocabulary of Jesus’ compassion in Mt 9:36 (“sheep without a shepherd”) is now the vocabulary of the mission of the twelve. Jesus sends the twelve precisely to what His heart saw with compassion: the lost sheep. The mission does not stem from a strategy of religious expansion but from concrete compassion for those who are lost. The sent ones go where the compassionate heart of Jesus sends them, and that heart is always oriented towards those “afflicted and downtrodden.”

Mary, “Mater Ecclesiae,” Mother of the Church, is the title proclaimed by Pope Paul VI at the conclusion of the third session of Vatican II (1964). This proclamation is not a new doctrinal revelation but the explicitation of a reality present in Jn 19:26-27: “Behold your mother,” Jesus gives Mary to the beloved disciple and, by extension, to the Church He represents. The Church inaugurated by the twelve with their sending in Mt 10 has in Mary its Mother, not the institutional founder (that role belongs to Peter and the apostles), but the Mother who accompanies, intercedes, and sustains.

IV. Mary and the Twelve in the Cenacle: The Church is Born in Prayer

After the Ascension, “the apostles returned to Jerusalem… and entered the Cenacle… All of them persevered unanimously in prayer, with some women, with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers” (Acts 1:12-14). This image of the twelve—less Judas and more Matthias who was about to be chosen—gathered with Mary in prayer before Pentecost is one of the most theologically rich images in the New Testament for the relationship between Mary and the apostolate.

Mary in the Cenacle does not hold an apostolic authority position, she does not preach, she does not preside, she is not the twelve. She holds a position corresponding to her specific mission: the mother who gathers the children, who prays with them, who sustains them through silent intercession as the apostles sustain them through preaching. The “unanimity” of prayer in the Cenacle, “homothumadón,” with one heart, includes Mary as an element of cohesion: the maternal presence that unifies those who could disperse due to temperamental and experiential differences.

Pentecost, which occurs after this unanimous prayer, is equivalent to Mt 10:1’s “He gave them authority over demons and diseases.” The Holy Spirit given at Pentecost is not only authority over demons and illnesses. It is the force of the universal mission that goes from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Mary who was present in the Cenacle when the Spirit descended upon the twelve was part of the foundational event of the universal mission, and continues, through her intercession, to accompany the mission inaugurated by that Pentecost.