Send Out Laborers for His Harvest

Send Out Laborers for His Harvest

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2013 C

By Rev Joe McCloskey, SJ

As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.  When you see this, your heart shall rejoice and your bodies flourish like the grass; the LORD’s power shall be known to his servants.  Isaiah 66:13-14

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.  Galatians 6:14

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.  Luke 10:2-3

Piety

Piety expresses the reality that at each moment of our lives in its newness we are being sent.  Sometimes we are sent to people that have no interest in the Lord.  They might never realize who they are looking at or who they are listening to because they do not understand our connection to Christ by the Contemplative in Action Grace.  Other times we have the chance to be the presence of the Lord to people who are actually looking at our relationship to Christ.  It is through and in our piety that we are sent by the Lord.  Piety is the expression of how the Lord works in us a hundred percent in our being ourselves in his name.  We pray as if it depends on ourselves entirely and we work as if our work depends on Christ totally. 

Study

It is with fear and trembling that we go out to do the work of the Lord.  It is much too easy to fear to speak in the name of the Lord.  We study and reflect on our experiences of sharing the Lord to discover how much the Lord can do for us if we do not block his using us by claiming the truth of our unworthiness and inability to present the Lord to our world.  It is amazing to reflect on how little we need to represent the Lord.  “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.” We cannot hide behind all the people we think are better than ourselves if the work is the Lord’s and not ours.  The Lord uses us as we are.  Study reveals what we are holding back of ourselves.  Looking at the results of what the Lord accomplishes in our lives frees us up to dare the impossible.

Action

The best actions of our lives can be our failures.  The Lord rewards our intentions more than our actions.  Paul sets the standards for our success.  Our best boast at what we have done for the Lord is found in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and our share of the cross.  Our actions use up our time and our energy.  The failures of our life when we wish we could have done so much more become the measure of our success in the cross of Christ.  Christ rewards our intention more than our performance.  We get credit in heaven for what we were trying to do for Christ.  Our credit is not limited by what we succeed in doing.  It can be said that our claim to fame in heaven will be the closeness we came to the cross of Christ.  The women in the concentration camp who said she felt sorry for the guards that were beating  her because they could not possibly know her loving God, captured  the truth of what God’s love is all about in the cross of Christ.  The cross of Christ is our power in what we do for Christ.