14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, year ’C’
“Jesus said to them : ’The harvest is plenty but there are few labourers. So pray the Master of the harvest to send out labourers for the harvest. Go! I send you out like lambs amongst wolves.”
“Pray” - this is the only thing Jesus tells us to do when faced with the lack of labourers for his harvest. It is God who prepares us and He can only send forth those who have responded to his call. So we need to settle down into long periods of prayer, imploring and doing this with great confidence.
Our payer will not just be a fleeting moment of our life in the Church, but a constant intercession.
We have understood how in prayer it is possible to start to follow Jesus so as to bear witness to the victory of his Love. It is God’s work that is done and we are happy to give our life to follow Jesus and those who have given their lives so that we too can have life!
Peace is a precious gift that gives us the possibility to enter into communion with other people. This peace transforms us and frees us from all that closes us up.
The Holy Spirit is at work and the announced Kingdom, the Word of God, comes about. Sent two by two, the disciples tell hat even the evil sprits are under them. Jesus said ’I saw Satan falling from heaven ’ but he adds ’Don’t rejoice because the evil spirits are under you, rejoice because your names are written in Heaven.’
“In every town you enter and where you are welcomed, eat what they offer you. Remain in that house, eating and drinking what is given to you, for the labourer deserves hiss alary. Do not o from house to house. Heal the sick who are there and tell them : ’The Kingdom of God is close to you.”
The labourers of the Kingdom sometimes have the impression that the world is abandoned, left to itself, that whole sectors of the world are in need of being worked on.
In reality, where we can only see wild weeds, God already sees the harvest growing in the Holy Spirit.
From the time the disciples are present to Him in prayer and in peace, the Holy Spirit is in the deepest part of themselves, bringing to birth the taste for the Kingdom of God. This taste for the Other, of true Life and of God is contagious, knocking over obstacles, and it has God being talked of in his presence.
Jesus asks us to announce Peace through an announcement that comes from the deepest parts of ourselves, and so the other person is transformed.
The Holy Spirit is the great Gift of God that Jesus leaves to his community! We pray with confidence, sure of Jesus’ victory. We are so happy to join God’s idea, the secular and universal project God has for our salvation. We pray by contemplating the Heart of God who puts his joy in going beyond anything we could hope for.
“I have given you authority to walk on snakes and scorpions and over all the enemy’s power, and nothing can hurt you.”
We are with Christ conquerors of all evil, and we are still on the banks of the world. We are not absent from the suffering in the world. Distress and death in the world are inscribed in the deepest part of our hearts. We welcome it and give it to Jesus to heal. On our road, brothers have announced to us God’s mysteries. With Jesus, we have entered the sanctuary and are invited to the Eucharist, to the table of the Blessed Trinity. We have been regenerated in the wounded Heart of the Lamb.
The Church is a mystery of offering which continues Jesus’ work in the world thanks to the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus. Saved, we become saviours for our brothers so long as we do not retain anything for ourselves, and offer up our whole life. We enter Jesus’ victory in his work of childbirth in the joy of the sower. We already share with Him the beauty of the harvest. The Peace of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesu is at work,we cultivate this peace in us.