Gospel according to Saint Matthew 9,36—10,8
When Jesus saw the crowds, He was moved with pity, for they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to his disciples, «The harvest is abundant but the workers are only few. Ask the master of the harvest to send workers to gather his harvest».
Then he called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority over the unclean spirits to drive them out and to heal every disease and sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first Simon, called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon, the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, the man who would betray him.
Jesus sent these twelve on mission with the instruction: «Do not visit pagan territory and do not enter a Samaritan town. Go instead to the lost sheep of the people of Israel. Go and proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near’. Heal the sick, bring the dead back to life, cleanse the lepers, and drive out demons. You received this as a gift, so give it as a gift».
They were troubled and abandoned.
Luis CASASUS President of the Idente Missionaries
Rome, June 18, 2023 | XI Sunday in Ordinary Time
Exodus 19: 2-6; Romans 5: 6-11; Mt 9: 36-38; 10:1-8
Today’s Gospel does not leave much room for sophisticated interpretations: The workers are few. It is a statement, if you will, quantitative, arithmetical, it is painful and challenging. No one disputes that the number of vocations to the priestly and religious life is decreasing almost everywhere in the world and, what is even more complicated, in places where the number of vocations has not fallen dramatically, not all of them are authentic and pure.
Already in the time of Christ the situation was difficult. Visiting all the towns and villages of Galilee to announce the Good News was already an overwhelming task, given the size of the population. But this is somewhat surprising. Didn’t Jesus himself say that he could count on twelve legions of angels to help him (Mt 26: 53)?
There seems to be something strange here. Kingdoms were not like this, never have been. Never was a king in short supply of servants, helpers or soldiers. This is what the prophet Samuel says about the future king Saul:
This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.
This is exactly what King Saul did.
If more workers were needed and Christ could have obtained them by asking the Father for them, why does he complain that the laborers are not enough? Few people, first and foremost the Founders, have a richer (not opposite) understanding of these words of Jesus. As our Father and Founder once told us, one authentic and hard-working missionary in each continent would be enough to start an intense spiritual revolution in a territory. This already gives us a clue to better understand what Jesus tells us to carry out: To ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.
This petition does not mean raising our eyes to heaven and saying: Father, you have to do something, send more help, because the work overflows us. The prayer that Jesus prayed was not that and it is certainly not a prayer made simply of words. The dialogue we are to engage in can be summarized as follows:
Father, the day is ending. I think I have given everything today; if not, please let me know, but it seems to me that I can do no more. Forgive me if I am wrong. Now, I think I can ask you to touch the hearts of other people better than me to fight for your kingdom. I promise you that tomorrow I will continue to do my best.
This prayer is a dialogue of deeds and words. I present to God the Father not only my good wishes, but the effort I have made. It is the confession, bold but sincere, that I believe I have done my best.
It happens that God has a different logic for his Kingdom than ours. To move hearts, he expects his workers to go to the limit of their possibilities, as happened in the miracle of the five loaves and two fish or in the life of a little girl many years ago:
A little girl was crying before the door of a church, the parish priest saw her and asked her why she was crying. She told him: I cannot attend catechesis today because there are no seats left. The priest saw that the girl looked disheveled and was dressed in rags, and immediately understood. He took her by the hand, led her into the classroom and found her a seat. That afternoon, the girl remembered how she had been able to attend catechesis that morning and felt very grateful. But she thought of the many children who could not attend and know Jesus because the church was too small. So she decided in her heart to help build a bigger church. After two years, the little girl became ill and died. Her family asked the priest to officiate the funeral. They discovered that he was carrying a small purse with a note. In it, the girl had written, “This is for the Lord, to enlarge our little church, so that more children can come to church and know and worship Jesus.”
Inside the purse were 57 cents. The little girl had been collecting them for two years. Reading the note, the priest wept. During the service, he told the story of the little girl’s purse and her wish. He then encouraged the parishioners to make the girl’s wish come true. A newspaper got wind of the girl’s story and published it. A well-to-do citizen read the article and was moved by the girl’s story and sold land to the church for 57 cents. Within 5 years, people from the church made donations and everyone who was moved by the story sent money. Her 57 cents became a large amount at the time. Today, in Philadelphia, you can find a church, seating 3,300 people, with a picture of a smiling girl and her 57 cent offering.
The workers who are like this little girl are the only ones capable of bringing any human being close to God, touching even the most indifferent or selfish person. Certainly, Jesus already warned that his kingdom is not of this world….
—ooOoo—
The difficulty with the abundant harvest is not only the number of people, but also that truly reaching each one of them is not a trivial matter. Christ complained that the people who were healed or fed by his miracles, did not change, rarely expressed gratitude or were not even willing to listen to him.
This is not only a moral problem, but a real and profound limitation. For many reasons, it is difficult for all of us to welcome the Good News; this should not surprise or discourage us. The Gospel text tells us that Christ was moved by two difficulties of the “crowd”: they were exhausted and abandoned.
It is remarkable how the Genesis already describes in a similar way the human condition after sin. On the one hand, exhaustion from work, from having children in pain, from the conflict between man and woman, between siblings… On the other hand, estrangement from God, for not being faithful to friendship with God and being expelled from Paradise, which leads to a feeling of loneliness, accentuated by death and separation from loved ones. Our weariness and abandonment, that is what moved the heart of Jesus and what moves the heart of the true apostle.
Who among us has not felt some form of weariness? Who has not experienced some form of loneliness? If I do not see these two forms, these two permanent signs of pain in the human being, I cannot be a true apostle. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit is capable of making our sensitivity grow and through our experiences of tiredness and loneliness, we can help in this abundant reaping, without measuring our efforts, which above all must be of self-denial rather than of activities. Thus we will be like those simple people in the parable of the workers of the last hour (Mt 20:1-16) who were looking for work and were always given the opportunity to labor for the kingdom of heaven.
If our life, even as sinners, reflects the image of Christ, by the grace we receive to be humble apostles, what Pope Francis once said will be fulfilled (10 APR 2016):
The presence of the risen Jesus transforms everything. Darkness is won over by light, useless work becomes newly fruitful and promising, the sense of tiredness and abandonment is replaced by a new joy and the certainty that he is with us.
I would like to end this meditation by recalling a moment from the Old Testament (Judges 6-8), to insist that the true apostles are not simply those who work hard, but those who are completely self-denying. The Lord tells Judge Gideon, before the battle with the Midianites, that he has too many soldiers and ends up making him choose only 300.
Do we realize what kind of workers are lacking in the Church?
_______________________________
In the Sacred Hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Luis CASASUS
President
