Friends, today the Lord directs his disciples to ask the Father to send laborers for the work of evangelization. The Christian life is lived in between these two imperatives: conversion and mission.
Having been seized by the beauty of revelation, our only proper response is a change of life and a commitment to become a missionary on behalf of what we have seen. In the scriptural tradition, no vision or experience of God is ever given simply for the edification of the visionary; rather, it is given for the sake of mission. No biblical figure is ever given an experience of God without receiving a commission.
Moses spies the burning bush, hears the sacred name of Yahweh, and is then told to go back to Egypt to liberate his people; Isaiah enjoys a mystical encounter with God amidst the splendor of the temple liturgy and is then sent to preach; Saul is overwhelmed by the luminosity of the risen Jesus and is subsequently called to apostleship. As theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar says, “The beautiful stops the viewer in his tracks and then plants within him a desire to speak to others of what he has seen.”