How did Christ the Lord appoint His twelve disciples and seventy apostles?

The Logos of God was incarnate to fulfil His Father’s kingdom, calling people to repent and believe in the gospel: “After John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.’” (Mark 1:14–15). Christ passed this message on to His disciples, so He can work through them: “Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach” (Mark 3:14). At the last supper, He commanded them to break the bread when He instituted the sacrament of the eucharist: “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).

To this day, Christ continues to preach, break bread, and shepherd through the sacrament of the priesthood, which He bestowed upon the apostles and the Church so they could spread the Kingdom of God in the world. The priest is an icon of Christ — the High Priest — honored to fulfil Christ’s work of pastorship, who is Himself the Good Shepherd (John 10:11, 14).

The Old Testament prophets perceived Christ as the Shepherd (Isa. 40:11; Ex. 34:23; 37:24; Zech. 13:7), and the apostles experienced Him as the overseer of our souls (1 Pet. 2:25); the chief shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4), and the great shepherd (Heb. 13:20). The person who is in Christ Jesus — the Father of all humanity — is occupied with nothing other than bearing all humanity in his own heart and leading them into the presence of God the Father. He desires to see everyone as the unblemished bride.

St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “For how shall I not love you, who so loved me—even when I was dark—as to lay down your life for the sheep that you shepherd? It is not possible to conceive a love greater than this: to give up the well-being of your life in exchange for mine. ‘Teach me, then,’ she says, ‘where you keep your flock, so that as I find the saving pasture I may be filled with heavenly nourishment (apart from the eating of which one cannot enter into life), and as I run to you, the Fountain, may I suck in the divine drink that you gush forth for those who are thirsty, pouring out water from your side after the iron spear gave that spring a mouth (cf. John 19:34)—the drink that, if one tastes of it, becomes a spring of water welling up to eternal life (cf. John 4:14). For if you pasture me in this way, you will assuredly give me rest at midday, when I shall take my sleep, having lain down in peace in the same place, in the unshadowed light. For the noonday, when the sun shines directly from overhead, is unshaded, and in it you give rest to those whom you shepherd, when you take your young ones with you into bed.’ But no one is worthy of noonday rest who has not become a son of

1602 Monastery of the Syrians, St. Basil the Great: His Life, Asceticism, and Church Canons (Arabic) (St. Mary’s Monastery (Deir al-Sourian), 2003) Section 3, point 52.

the light and a son of the day. One who has separated himself equally from both the evening darkness of the west and the morning darkness of the east (that is, from the place where evil begins and the place where it ceases)—this is the one who is given rest at noonday by the Sun of Righteousness. (Mal. 4:2).”¹⁶⁰³