Praying for and Responding To Our Vocation and Mission as Harvesters, Eleventh Sunday (A), June 18, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Annunciation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Suffern, NY
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
June 18, 2023
Ex 19:2-6, Ps 100, Rom 5:6-11, Mt 9:36-10:8

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• Today’s readings focus on two essential and related elements: electionby God of a group of people and the mission associated with that election with respect to everyone else. They point to something fundamental for us to understand not only in terms of sound ecclesiology but also to grasp better our vocation and mission as Christians, priests and religious.
• We see these two elements in the first reading from the Book of Exodus, when God chose the Israelites to be his special people, his “treasured possession,” and a “priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” He did so not because the sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were intrinsically better than any other race of people or nation — as we know from the chronicle of their infidelities — but so that he could prepare a people, through a Covenant, to be ready to receive the gift of God’s own Son as the Messiah and Savior of the whole World.
• Likewise, in the Gospel today of St. Matthew, we see that that Messiah and Savior chooses, from among all of those following him, twelve disciples, giving them a special task — both by their words as well as by the miraculous deeds he gave them authority and power to accomplish — to announce that the kingdom of God was at hand. They were not chosen because they were superior to the rest of disciples, but because Jesus wanted to give them a task to do for all the rest.
• Finally, in the second reading taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we can ponder the reality of ourelection as Christians and what that means. We were chosen by God in baptism and made his special people. The Eucharistic Preface we’ll use today (Sunday of Ordinary Time I) will paraphrase the words of St. Peter who, in an early baptismal catechesis, updated the words of today’s first reading and wrote to us Christians: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a dedicated nation, and a people claimed by God for his own, to proclaim the triumphs of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). Like the others, we have been chosen not because we’re better than any other people; St. Paul tells us this in today’s second reading when he says that “while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” We were chosen, rather, for the sake of the mission, to continue Jesus’ saving work until the ends of the world.
• Vocation and mission are intrinsically related. Every time God chooses particular persons or particular peoples, he selects them for a mission. God calls so that one day he may send. The two great verbs in his vocabulary are “come!” — “Come, follow me!” (Mt 19:21), “Come away with me and rest for a while” (Mk 6:31), “Come to me all you who labor and find life burdensome and I will refresh you” (Mt 11:28) — and “go” — “Go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 10:6), “Go to the ends of the earth and proclaim the Good News” (Mt 28:18).
• We Catholics have been chosen by God for all eternity and given a special mission to announce his Gospel and proclaim his kingdom to the ends of the earth. Only one in three people on the planet are Christians, 2.6 out of 7.9 billion. Only 1.3 billion, 16 percent, have the privilege we do of the fullness of revelation, the fullness of the participation in God’s own life in this world, and the fullness of communion. But God didn’t give us his revelation or the sacraments or the Petrine ministry and apostolic succession so that we could become a haughty elite or clique. He gave us these incredible gifts so that we might be his hands, his feet, his mouth, his ears, his eyes in bringing those gifts to others. “To whom more is given,” Jesus said, “more is to be expected” (Lk 12:48). We have been given more, but, as we see in the Parable of the Talents, we’re called to do more with what we’ve been given (Mt 25:14-29).
• That is the context better to understand and more wholeheartedly to respond to today’s Gospel. Jesus looked with compassion on the helpless and abandoned crowds, because, St. Matthew says, they were “like sheep without a shepherd,” and his heart burst with pity. He told the disciples that the Harvest is abundant but the laborers are few and so instructed them to pray to the Master of the Harvest for laborers. As they were praying, Jesus helped Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Barthlomew, Thomas, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon from Cana and Judas Iscariot to recognize that they were God’s answer to the prayers they were making to him. He changed them from disciples (“followers,” “learners”) to apostles, literally those he is sending out, gave him his own authority and told them to drive out unclean spirits, cure every disease and illness, raise the dead, and proclaim that “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” That’s what these simple men then actually went out to do.
• We learn several very important lessons from the pivotal scene in world and salvation history.
• The first is Jesus’ mercy. Just as Jesus looked with pity on the helpless and abandoned crowds then, so he doubtless looks at so many in today’s world with the same compassion. So many are like shepherdless sheep, searching for direction, lost in the cosmos. Four months ago the Centers for Disease Control published a survey of teenagers in which they detailed how 42 percent of American teens say they felt persistently sad and hopeless, 22 percent seriously considered suicide in the past year, 18 percent had come up with a concrete plan and ten percent actually tried to carry out that plan and thankfully failed. Those huge numbers are even higher for teen girls: 57 percent say they’re chronically sad and hopeless, 30 percent have seriously considered suicide in the last year, and 24 percent had a plan. They are suffering. Many are not hearing the Good Shepherd’s voice, and so they are tuning in the voices of strangers, even wolves, and following them into danger. Jesus is calling us to look at them with the eyes of his bursting heart.
• The second lesson is about the harvest. Jesus tells us that the harvest is huge and there are few taking it in. In St. John’s Gospel he said, “Look around you and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting!” (Jn 4:35). We don’t have to be a farmer to understand what will happen if we don’t act when the fields are ripe: the produce will corrupt. It’s a call to urgent action. The fields are ever white. We can’t waste time. For some people, perhaps for us, today may be the last day for action. Do we feel that urgency, that woe, to proclaim the Gospel, and to do the work of the kingdom?
• The third thing is about the need for prayer. In response to the huge harvest about to perish in the fields, Jesus first has us pray for harvesters. This is a command with no expiration date, insofar as there will always been an urgent need for vocations until the end of time. Jesus does not have us go to the fields right away. In response to the need for vocations to the priesthood, religious life, marriage, the diaconate, Christian psychiatrists and psychologists, doctors, nurses, Catholic school teachers, catechists, you name it, the first thing Jesus wants us to do is not a viral video, catchy poster, or new program. It’s prayer. The first thing we always need to do is pray. Vocations are always gifts from God to which human beings must respond, not things we earn from our own efforts, like salesmen showing quarterly earnings. The vocations crisis that the Church is suffering across the board in many locations is ultimately a crisis of the lack of prayer. Not enough are praying for vocations, not to mention praying as if their eternal life depended on it. In response to the ripe harvest, we have to pray with urgency and insistence. Is that the way we pray? Are those the pressing intentions we’ve brought to Mass today?
• The fourth thing is to notice what Jesus has us pray for. He has us ask God the Father, the Harvest Master, not for ‘bodies,” but “laborers,” hard workers. Harvesting for Jesus is not a cushy air-conditioned job in a plush corner office. The harvest needs people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty, to work up a sweat. Who are these laborers that the harvest needs? Many Catholics can look at this passage as a call to pray for priestly and religious vocations. That is clearly one application of this passage, which is why it is often used by those in vocations work. The whole Church needs to pray more insistently for these vineyard laborers in an age when a shortage is already here and will become more acute. But sixty years after the Second Vatican Council, it should be clear that priests and religious are not the only hard-workers the Harvest Master needs in his vineyard. The fields are ripe and all of us, as God’s chosen ones, have a role in bringing in that harvest. No one gets a pass from living out the consequences of our Baptism and Confirmation. If we think we do, we’re not really Jesus’ disciples, for Jesus said, “The one who doesn’t gather with me scatters” (Mt 12:30). Jesus says there’s no way to be neutral: we’re either gatherers and laborers in his vineyard, or we’re scatterers, driving people away from him. Every Catholic is called to be a laborer in the vineyard, to gather with Jesus. To each of us, Jesus says, “I appointed youto go and bear fruit that will last” (Jn 15:16). As in the first century, so Jesus wants us in the twenty-first century to recognize that he’s summoning each of us as we’re praying for laborers to be the concrete answer to those petitions. The whole purpose why he founded the Church was to give us, as a community, the joint task to complete his mission. To proclaim as we do in the Creed that the Church is “apostolic” means not just that it is founded on the Twelve and their successors, but has and is a “mission,”  which is what the Greek word “apostolos” (“to be sent”) signifies. Jesus today looks at the multitudes who are lost, many of whom may not be saved, and turns to each of us — with all of the talents and opportunities and graces he’s given us — and says, “What are you going to do about it?” He asks, “Will you help me in this mission for the salvation of the world?”
• The fifth thing we notice is the substance of our labor in the fields. Jesus sends the Twelve out to proclaim that the Kingdom of God “has approached” and gives them his authority to expel demons and heal every disease and illness. The Kingdom is present because the King has arrived. The Kingdom of God is, in short, God. It’s where he reigns. To proclaim the Kingdom at hand is to say, “God is here” and “We need to let him reign in our lives.” Jesus sent out the Twelve, and he sends us out, to proclaim, not merely with our words but by the way we live, that we’re not alone, that God is alive, that is he is with us, and that letting him rule in our life has made all the difference in saving us and joyfully transforming us. As part of the proclamation that God is among us, Jesus sends the 12 out with his authority to expel demons and heal diseases. It must have blown them away to hear and receive this commission of the Lord’s authority. He was sending them out, in other words, with far more than a message to announce; he was sending them with deeds to do. These deeds were signs that the kingdom had come, that the Messiah had arrived, and that the time for change was now. The Church in every age needs to be signs of the Kingdom, which means signs of exorcism, no longer letting the prince of this world, the father of lies, have any dominion over us and bringing people to Jesus to experience that same liberation. Likewise, to be signs of the kingdom means that we need to be the nurses of the Divine Physician and, as Pope Francis never ceases of saying, healing the wounds of those today. The Church, he says, is a field hospital in battle, it’s a trauma unit, and so many are wounded physically, emotionally, relationally, or spiritually. We’re sent out as Good Samaritans to try to care for people in their illnesses and to help them let Jesus and his healing into their life, remembering that Jesus never healed just for physical healing’s sake, but to bring people to spiritual healing by faith. But we should also stop to ponder something even more astonishing than what Jesus did, in giving the apostles his authority to cast out demons and heal the sick. He has given the Church today authority to do something infinitely greater. He has equipped the Church through Baptism and Confession to heal the soul of sin, through the Eucharist to bring the King from heaven to the altar, and to place that King within us in Holy Communion. We should never stop marveling at these gifts as we are attached as branches to him who is the Vine, and made capable in communion with Him of bearing incredible fruit through preaching, exorcising, healing, and in short, living with the power of Christ’s love. Are we excited for this mission? Are we faithful to it?
• Sixth, we notice is where Jesus wants us to begin harvesting. He sent the apostles first to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He sent them to those around them, whom they knew, who spoke their own language, who shared their own culture. The “house of Israel” included those that the apostles might have taken for granted, like the Scribes, Pharisees, Chief Priests and Sadducees, because they should have known more about the kingdom than the apostles did, but groups in large part were lost even when the Kingdom was among them at hand. Similarly, we’re sent out first not to the furthest ends of the world to strangers, but to the “lost sheep” among us — to those we know are lost and even to those who we would presume would not be lost but maybe are going through a crisis of faith, even if priests, religious, or lifelong fervent Catholics, who too need a reminder of the Lord’s presence, of his dominion over the evil one, of his healing power, of life-giving communion with him and through, with and in him with others. Even if Jesus has sent us to far away countries like Canada, or will, he wants us still to focus on the “lost sheep” of our own houses, convents, rectories, neighborhoods, to the wandering lambs and goats of our families, friends, and coworkers. He wants to send us to the lapsed and lukewarm and unchurched people on all sides, us to the wounded, mangled and abandoned, the “sheep without a shepherd,” to tell them that there is a Good Shepherd calling them by name, who loves them and has laid down his life for them (Jn 10:3,11). But he wants to use our recognizable voice to get his message across. Others’ salvation may hinge on our saying yes to this mission. Are we ready to go to those around us in the same pew with us, lest we neglect them by going in our imagination to the other side of the world?
• The last thing we see is the spirit with which Jesus wants us to respond. He tells us at the end of today’s Gospel passage, “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.” Everything we have and are we have received from God. Jesus calls us to respond to the free gift of his life for us with the free gift of our life for him and others. To love others as he has loved us means precisely to lay down our lives out of love for the salvation of our family, our friends, our fellow priests or religious, even our enemies. We’re called to work as hard for their salvation as Jesus did for ours. This is our mission. This is the reason why we were chosen. This is the task of the Catholic Church and every faithful Catholic.
• To strengthen us for this hard work and as a reward for it, Jesus gives us his own flesh and blood in the Eucharist. In it we learn the meaning of generosity, how to give our body and shed our blood and sweat for the salvation of others. This is just one more proof that the Lord, who calls us to this mission, will give us all the help we need to fulfill it, if only we say yes, if only we look with compassion on the same crowds, if only we turn in prayer to the Harvest Master and plead for laborers and respond, rolling up our sleeves and going out with urgency to gather for him those who are ripe and even those that still need to ripen. Here at Mass, on this Father’s Day, God the Father gives us His Son so that we can go out with him and, just like the first apostles, to heal and proclaim that the Kingdom of God is indeed here because the King is here with us always, full of mercy, until the end of time.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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