St Paul in the second reading from Corinthians today writes that "Christ did not send me to baptise, but to preach the Good News". These words speak loud and clear about the defining features of Christianity and about priorities we should establish in the building up of the Christian community.

For too long we have understood the Church's mission mainly in terms of providing the sacraments to shepherd the flock. But the Gospel offers some very important hints of the way forward to rediscover a New Testament mandate for the Church in the 21st century. We cannot stand by and watch the contemporary Church become a pale, anaemic version of its former self.

Matthew's Gospel, which we shall be reading throughout this liturgical year, highlights the essentials of the Christian community. Today's Gospel closes with what we may hold to be the Church's main defining features, namely, preaching the Good News and healing the sick. It sounds like a 'back to basics' call that is being made today, not because of some fashionable anti-institutionalism, but rather from a direct sense of obligation to the primal evangelical yearning - that the Gospel of Jesus Christ be heard and responded to in our time and in our place.

From today's set of readings it transpires very clearly that there is something very radical about God's Word. For the past 40 years, particularly in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, we have been talking perhaps too much about reform and renewal in the Church. But experience and the reality around us show that the Church actually needs to be 'refounded'.

The beginning of Jesus' ministry takes place in Galilee and the way it is narrated in today's Gospel may be divided into three parts: Jesus coming back to Galilee, Jesus calling the first disciples, and Jesus proclaiming the Word and curing people.

Matthew sums up the ministry of Jesus in Galilee with the words: "He went round the whole of Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom and curing all kinds of diseases and sickness among the people." This, in a nutshell, is progression from darkness to light as it unfolds in the biblical narrative throughout the history of salvation.

Coupled with this is Jesus's calling of Peter and his brother Andrew, and later of James and his brother John. Jesus is already constituting his Church, made up of common people whom he sought and found in their place of work. He placed on them the responsibility of the manner by which the Good News was to be handed on. That's what the Church is for and that's what the first disciples were sent to do.

But with the passing of time, things gradually changed, and, as D.H. Lawrence said as long ago as 1924, "The adventure has gone out of the Christian venture".

While in reality we live in a post-Christendom context, the western Church still operates for the most part in a Christendom mode. We as a Church are more concerned with the maintaining the institution than with the mission of preaching and healing people's ills. In all this, what is at stake is the ability of the Church in the West to both maintain and invigorate its witness. A missionary Church always thinks of the long haul rather than the quick fix.