LABOURERS FOR THE HARVEST

TUESDAY, FOURTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Gen 32:23-33; Ps 17:1-3,6-8; Mt 9:32-37

The Making of the Labourers

The Gospel reading from Saint Matthew’s Gospel presents the same statement of Jesus Christ on the scarcity of labourers for the harvest of people for eternal life, which Saint Luke’s Gospel presented on Sunday. As we noted in Sunday’s reflection, the reason for the scarcity of labourers is the reason for the loneliness of the heavenly Jerusalem, namely, lack of faith in the Word of God, and specifically, lack of faith in the Son of Man. Subsequently, Jesus asked the disciples and all of us to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest. “The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest.” The harvest is plentiful because the heavenly bridegroom is here; the Eternal Word of God has assumed flesh and lives among us. With the gift of the Word, the Father has shed the gift of faith abroad corresponding to the mission of the Son. What is now needed is to receive and cooperate with the gifts that God has given to humanity. The Lord enlists the labourers for this purpose: to awaken the people to accept and cooperate with divine gifts for their salvation.

God does not just enlist labourers; he trains them on the job to work effectively and efficiently. The Father enlists or calls us to the harvest by using various events and things to evoke our faith. The interest awakened by the coming of faith makes us attendants to the bridegroom. The system of apprenticeship gradually transforms the attendants into masters, like the Master. The Lord pointed out the nature of this system later, when he says in Mt 10:25, “It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters.” The Lord emphasised the importance of our attention on the Master when he called his disciples attendants to the bridegroom. Our attention to the Master will determine how well and how fast our transformation will occur. Added to the problem of a lack of faith among us, the lack of prayerful attention to our Teacher, Jesus Christ, is another cause of the scarcity of labourers in the harvest. There are so many who pretend to be working for the Lord of the harvest, but are harvesting for themselves. We become less efficient in the proclamation of the Gospel when we proclaim it with a vested interest. Some of us have lost the power to proclaim the Gospel due to engrossment with the riches of this world. “A man was brought to Jesus, a dumb demoniac. And when the devil was cast out, the dumb man spoke, and the people were amazed.” We regain our effectiveness and efficiency in the harvest by turning our full attention to our Master and Lord.

The third challenge the Lord encounters in the training of the labourers to work effectively and efficiently is our too much reliance on our natural gifts or endowments. Nature cannot achieve the salvation of our souls, which lies in the power of God alone. Thus, the Lord answered the disciples’ bewilderment on the impossibility of a rich man to enter heaven by announcing that salvation is impossible for man, only possible for God. We abandon our natural endowments for a total reliance on God and the graces he provides abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord for a bountiful harvest. Jacob experienced this difficulty in trusting and working with God. He inherited the promised blessings of Abraham, but continued to rely on his natural ability to swindle or deceive people. Coming back to the promised land, he feared the revenge of his brother, Esau. He made a plan to secure his family and company. For Jacob to possess the blessings of Abraham, he needed to believe and entrust himself into the hands of God. God wrestled with him, as he does with each of us, to break his lifelong resistance to the will of God. “And there was one that wrestled with him until daybreak, who, seeing that he could not master him, struck him in the socket of his hip, and Jacob’s hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him.” So, he changed his name from Jacob to Israel; that is, from the swindler to the one without guile. His new name reflected a new person God can comfortably work with. The training of the labourers must transform them into masters for an effective and efficient harvest.

Let us pray: O God, who through the assumption of our lowly human nature by your Son have commenced the work of our transformation into effective and efficient labourers in your harvest, fill us with faith that will help us abandon our slavery to sin and proclaim the eternal gladness you have bestowed on us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.