FORMATION OF THE LABOURERS

SAINT NICHOLAS, BISHOP

Isa 30:19-21,23-26; Ps 147:1-6; Mt 9:35-10:1,5,6-8

The Plentiful Harvest and Few Labourers

The whole world is the vineyard or the farmland of the Lord our God. As we have recently reflected, God created us in his image, much like seeds he plants in the farmland that will grow into his likeness. The transformation from the image of God, which we bear as an initial gift from God to the likeness of God, which we will attain by cooperating with God, involves a long process with different stages. The entrance of sin at the fall of Adam and Eve added more stages to the process. The redemptive grace of the word of God has to precede the awareness of self and expression of faith in the word of God. In essence, there is the addition of weeds or tares in the farmland/vineyard of the Lord, which was initially filled with only good seeds created by God. The Lord’s parable of the wheat and the darnel or tare illustrates this understanding properly. The reluctance of the Lord of the farm to root out the tares indicates that they are also his creatures, seeds he planted in his farm, but turned into darnels by the corruption of the enemy. So, the work or labour in the divine farmland is made even more onerous by the poisoning or corruptive effect of evil and tares, which are men he has recruited through his poisoning or corruptive activities.

Subsequently, the Lord of the farm employs a costly and painful treatment to salvage and recruit labourers for his farm. The seeds, the harvest, and the labourers are from the same stock or farm. The work in the farmland of the Lord of Hosts requires extreme care, for even the tares or weeds are transformable into labourers through a tedious and expensive transformative process involving the grace of God. Isaiah writes of this in the passage. “People of Zion, you will live in Jerusalem and weep no more. He will be gracious to you when he hears your cry; when he hears, he will answer. When the Lord has given you the bread of suffering and the water of distress, he who is your teacher will hide no longer, and you will see your teacher with your own eyes.” It is a laborious and costly process in which the Lord of the harvest uses sufferings as bread to nourish us, and distress as water to quench our thirst. In this divine and tedious transformation, the corruption of evil and sin is removed from tares, which become wheat processed into the body of Jesus Christ, and they end as labourers in the vineyard. A weed or tare is destroyed when the process finds nothing that can be salvaged. Therefore, it is still the same process of transformation from his image to his likeness. They are like the Lord of the harvest, those he sends to work in his harvest.

Regarding the costly transformative process, Isaiah mentions the abundance of divine grace which will characterise the coming of the Messiah, the Chief Harvester of the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts. “He will send rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the bread that the ground provides will be rich and nourishing.” In addition to rain, streams will gush from the ground: “On every lofty mountain, on every high hill there will be streams and watercourses, on the day of the great slaughter when the strongholds fall.” The sun’s energy will increase sevenfold for the seeds to grow and produce fruit. “Then moonlight will be bright as sunlight and sunlight itself be seven times brighter—like the light of seven days in one—on the day the Lord dresses the wound of his people and heals the bruises his blows have left.” These happened at the incarnation of the Word. The Son of Man has authority and shares it with us for the harvest of souls. “He summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits with power to cast them out and to cure all kinds of diseases and sickness.” Saint Nicholas worked as a willing, happy, and pleasant labourer in the vineyard of the Lord. He was the bishop of Myra, in Lycia, now part of Turkey. He died in the middle of the fourth century. People have venerated him throughout the Church since the 10th century due to his charity to the poor and needy. He is the patron of pawnbrokers, whose insignia of three golden balls represent the three purses of gold he is said to have given secretly to a poor man who could not afford dowries for his three daughters. His secret charity to the poor originated the Santa Claus secret Christmas gifts.

Let us pray: We humbly implore your mercy, Lord: protect us in all dangers through the prayers of the Bishop Saint Nicholas, that the way of salvation may lie open before us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of Holy Sirit, God, for ever and ever.