Praying to the Harvest Master with St. Therese, 26th Thursday (II), October 1, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Thursday of the 26th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face
October 1, 2020
Job 19:21-27, Ps 27, Lk 10:1-12

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• On Tuesday, if we did not have the proper Gospel reading for the Feast of the Archangels, we would have come to the fulcrum of St. Luke’s Gospel (Lk 9:51), in which we read how Jesus fixed his face on Jerusalem, on Calvary, on his redemptive passion, and how everything thereafter in St. Luke’s Gospel is meant to be understood with that focus in mind, a focus he wants us to share. That’s what grounds today’s commission of the 72 to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus was heading toward his coronation (with thorns). They were to be the heralds of the Kingdom, which means that that King is present, the King is alive, the King provides, the King brings peace. All of the instructions Jesus gives is with that in mind. There’s an urgency to the task: they’re to pray for fellow laborers for the harvest, because the harvest is ripe; they’re to greet no one along the way, but be focused on completing their mission; they’re being sent not as assassins but as lambs, to announce meekly to others’ freedom, rather than compel them; they’re to show their trust in God’s providence by not taking money, a sack of food, a second pair of sandals; they’re to announce the peace that the Prince of Peace has brought through the forgiveness of sins; they’re to eat whatever is set before them, whether served by Pharisees or by Publicans, whether kosher or not, because the King created it all and it’s not a forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they’re to stay in the same place, grateful to God and to their hosts, and not looking for a better one; they’re to cure the sick as a sign of the cure of the soul that the King is bringing about. All of these flow from a living relationship with the King.
• We see the same relationship with a living King in Job. After his friends failed to persuade him that his sufferings were a result of sin, after his arguments likewise failed to persuade them, after he was experiencing profound pain and sorrow, he made an extraordinary profession of faith. That even should he die and return to the dust from which he came, “I know that my Vindicator lives and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust.” He knew that his Redeemer, God, is alive and would live on after his death — and not only that but “I myself shall see Him … with my own eyes … from my flesh,” something that filled his inmost being with longing. As he was in great pain throughout his body, his innards were longing not for “relief” but for his Redeemer!
• That type of faith, trust and love in the living Lord, the Redeemer of the human person, is what characterized the faith of St. Therese Lisieux, whom the Church rejoices to celebrate today. It is the essence of her “little way of trust and love” that was validated by the Church when it proclaimed St. Therese as a doctor. On Saturday, I met with many of the new fellows for this year’s Leonine Forum and one of them mentioned that St. Therese was her favorite saint because she made the way of holiness simple. That’s what God has done through her. St. Therese has taught us all through her little way of spiritual childhood how to trust in God like a little child and to let God do the heavy lifting for our holiness. We need to open ourselves up with grateful love to receive that gift and to cooperate with the holy stubbornness of a child.
• Holiness, however, is not just following Christ as disciples, but being transformed by him so that we might share his Mission, just like he sent out the 72 disciples to proclaim the Kingdom. As we ponder the Gospel of the Sending of the 72, we can learn so much from the Co-Patronness of the Missions as to how God wants us to participate in this Mission. Pope Francis wrote in his exhortation on The Joy of the Gospel that each of us must get to the point where we are able to say, “I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world.” That was certainly true for the Little Flower, who ardently desired to be a missionary. That Mission begins with love. The essence of her spirituality was “to love Jesus and make him loved.” She discovered her vocation to be beating heart of the Mystical Body, to be love in the heart of the Church her mother, precisely by loving Jesus and extending his love, helping people to make personal Jesus’ words during the Last Supper, “Just as the Father loves me, I love you. … Remain in my love. … Love one another just as I have loved you.” What’s essential in being a missionary, we learn from her, are not the legs but the heart. It’s not the physical act of traversing land and sea, but begins with a yearning to respond to the love of God by seeking to share it, a hunger to go, teach all nations, and share with them the depth of Jesus’ redeeming love.
• That deep craving began when she was very young. Her family used to read the “Annals of the Propagation of the Faith” on the “setback and victories of the Catholic Mission.” Her sister Celine recounts that after having read some pages of the Annals of the Missionary Sisters, young Thérèse said: “I don’t want to continue reading. I already have such a vehement desire to be a missionary!… I want to be a Carmelite.” Celine said that her sister aspired to Carmel “to suffer more and for this means to save more souls.” St. Therese wrote about a grace she received at 14: “Like His apostles: ‘Master, I have fished all night and caught nothing’… He made of me a fisher of souls. I experienced a great desire to work for the conversion of sinners, a desire I hadn’t experienced so intensely before.” Much later she would state, “I would spread the Gospel in all parts of the earth, even to the farthest isles. I would be a missionary, but not for a few years only. Were it possible, I should wish to have been one from the world’s creation and to remain one till the end of time. Give to us souls, dear Lord. … We thirst for souls, above all, for the souls of apostles and martyrs … so that through them we may inflame all poor sinners with love of you.” This gave meaning to all her suffering. She said, “The end cannot be reached without adopting the means, and since Our Lord had made me understand that it was through the cross He would give me souls, the more crosses I encountered the stronger became my attraction to suffering. I am convinced that no remedies have the power to cure me, but I have made a covenant with God that they may be for the benefit of poor missionaries who have neither time nor means to take care of themselves.” She was photographed three months before she tied holding a text of St. Teresa of Jesus in her hands: “To liberate only one [soul] I would gladly die many times over.” She would write, “In spite of my littleness, I would like to enlighten souls as did the Prophets and the Doctors. I have the vocation of the Apostles. I would like to travel over the whole earth to preach your Name and to plant your glorious cross on infidel soil. But…one mission alone would not be sufficient for me, I would want to preach the Gospel on all the five continents simultaneously and even to the most remote isles. I would be a missionary, not for a few years only, but from the beginning of creation until the consummation of the ages.”
• But the essence of her Missionary vocation was prayer based on that zeal. She is the icon of the whole Church in praying to the Harvest Master for laborers for his harvest. She became a Carmelite precisely to be a missionary through her prayer of soul and bodily suffering. It is “for prayer and sacrifice,” she entered the Carmel, “that one can help the missionaries.” Back in 2000, the future Pope Benedict XVI gave an address to catechists from all over the world on the New Evangelization. He considered what the evangelists said about Jesus, “Jesus preached by day, he prayed by night.” Then he commented: “Jesus had to acquire the disciples from God. The same is always true. We ourselves cannot gather men. We must acquire them by God for God. All methods are empty without the foundation of prayer. The word of the announcement must always be drenched in an intense life of prayer.” Her life was. We see that in the way she prayed for Henri Pranzini on death row until he embraced God’s mercy by kissing a crucifix right before he was guillotined. We see it in the way she adopted Father Maurice Bellière and Father Adolphe Rulland, missionaries respectively in Africa and China, and helped them to fulfill their priestly and missionary vocations. She was once asked by one of those adopted Missionary priest brothers what was the reason why, more that 1800 years after Christ had come, there were still so many people who had never heard his saving name. Her response was because of the laziness of Christians. Many Christians don’t lose sleep over that fact. They don’t drop to their knees until their calloused. They don’t sacrifice for Missionaries. They don’t become Missionaries. Saint Therese, rather, prayed, sacrified, lived and breathed for vocations for the Mission. She prayed for a generous response to the Lord’s full outpouring. Therese is praying for us that we will learn to pray like she does.
• She wrote once, about the image Jesus uses in today’s Gospel.  “I was thinking one day what could be done to save souls; a passage of the Gospel gave me a clear light. On one occasion Jesus said to his disciples, showing them the fields of mature crops: ‘Lift up your eyes and see how the fields are quite white, ready as to be harvested” (Jn 4, 35). A little later she adds: “Truly, the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few; pray, then, the owner of the harvest that he send workers’. What mystery! Is not Jesus omnipotent? Did he not make all creatures? Why does Jesus say: Pray the Harvest Master that he send laborers? Why? Ah! It is because Jesus feels for us such an incomprehensible love that he wants us to have part with him in the salvation of the souls, redeemed, like her, at the price of all his blood.” Thus, she reached the conclusion: “Our vocation is not go to reap in the fields of the mature crops; Jesus doesn’t tell us: ‘Lower your eyes, look at the fields and go and reap’. Our mission is more sublime still. Here are Jesus’ words: ‘Lift your eyes and see. See how in heaven there are empty places, he asks you to fill them. You are my praying Moses on the mountain; request workers of me, and I will send them. I only wait for a prayer, a sigh of your heart! The apostolate of prayer, is it not so to say, higher than that of preaching? Our mission, as Carmelites, is one of forming evangelical workers that will save millions of souls whose mothers we will be.” She rejoiced in her vocation: “The only purpose of our prayers and sacrifices is the one of being the apostles’ apostle, praying for them while they evangelize souls with by word and, mainly, by their example.” She was a firm believer in the power of this prayer to the Harvest Master: “How great it is the power of prayer!,” she exclaimed, reflecting on Queen Esther. “It could be said that she is a queen that has free access before the king in all moments, being able to obtain as much as she requests.”
• To learn from St. Therese, and live a truly missionary spirituality, we must stoke our love for Christ the Redeemer and for those he died to redeem, such that we cannot wait to share Christ and his Kingdom with them. As Pope Francis describes in the Joy of the Gospel, “What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known?” “We have a treasure of life and love that cannot deceive, and a message that cannot mislead or disappoint.” It ennobles us and is never out of date. This infinite love cures our infinite sadness.” “We know,” he says, from personal experience, just as she did, that “it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to. …We know well that with Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything. This is why we evangelize.” It starts with that love of God that we want to share: to love Jesus and to make him loved.  Next it involves having a missionary spirituality, the spirituality of the Holy Spirit, who comes down on the Church as tongues of fire so that we might proclaim the faith with ardor. Third it comes from prayer. The word of the announcement must always be drenched in an intense life of prayer,” as the future Pope Benedict said. Then we actually need to share it with those we can, in person, with letters, with our technological advancements, every way we can. This is not just words but witness. We preach not merely with lips but with lives transformed by Christ and enriched.
• During her last illness, St. Therese affirmed: “I feel that I am going to enter into rest. But I mainly feel that my mission is about to begin, my mission of making God loved as I love him … My heaven will be spent on earth until the end of the world. Yes, I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth … I cannot be happy rejoicing, I cannot rest until all souls are saved.” Her mission in heaven is to continue the mission she fulfilled on earth, of making Jesus loved as she loves him. She said 11 days before her God came for her that she wanted “even save souls after my death.” She was excited about that mission and wrote with joy, “There will be no longer any cloister and grilles and my soul will be able to fly with you into distant lands.” She continues her work in us helping us to love Jesus as she did, to enter his kingdom, and to receive his gift of redemption. She continues praying for us. And that’s why we should have such confidence. If we have her praying on our side that we have every confidence we can live the missionary dimension of the Christian life and bear great fruit, so that others will come to experience Christ’s love for them and become, with Therese, love in the heart of the Church helping others to come to so that same mercy. As we prepare to receive our living Redeemer in Holy Communion, let us ask for this grace!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

GospelLK 10:1-12

Jesus appointed seventy-two other disciples
whom he sent ahead of him in pairs
to every town and place he intended to visit.
He said to them,
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
Go on your way;
behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals;
and greet no one along the way.
Into whatever house you enter, first say,
‘Peace to this household.’
If a peaceful person lives there,
your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you.
Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you,
for the laborer deserves his payment.
Do not move about from one house to another.
Whatever town you enter and they welcome you,
eat what is set before you,
cure the sick in it and say to them,
‘The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.’
Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you,
go out into the streets and say,
‘The dust of your town that clings to our feet,
even that we shake off against you.’
Yet know this: the Kingdom of God is at hand.
I tell you,
it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day
than for that town.”

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