Come, Go

Gospel

Mt 9:36—10:8



At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for thembecause they were troubled and abandoned,like sheep without a shepherd.Then he said to his disciples,“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;so ask the master of the harvestto send out laborers for his harvest.”Then he summoned his twelve disciplesand gave them authority over unclean spiritsto drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.The names of the twelve apostles are these:first, Simon called Peter, and his brother Andrew;James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John;Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector;James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus;Simon from Cana, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him.Jesus sent out these twelve after instructing them thus,“Do not go into pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town.Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons.Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”

Homily

“Come!” and “Go!”

Every time Jesus chooses an individual or a people, He chooses them for a mission. God calls so that one day He may send. The two great verbs in His vocabulary are “COME!”—“Come, follow me” (Mt. 19:21), “Come away with me and rest a while” (Mk. 6:31), “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt. 11:28)—and “GO!”—“Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 10:6), “Go . . . and make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:19).

We Christians have been chosen by God for all eternity and given a special mission to announce His Gospel and proclaim His kingdom to the ends of the earth. Only one out of every five people on the planet are Catholic. Only 20% have the fullness of revelation and the fullness of participation in God's own life in this world. But God didn't give us His revelation or the sacraments so that we could become a haughty elite. He gave us all of them so that we might be His hands, His feet, His mouth, His ears, and His eyes in bringing those gifts to others. “Everyone to whom much is given,” Jesus said, “much will be required” (Lk. 12:48). We have been given more, but, as in the parable of the talents, we're called to do more with what we've been given (Mt. 25:14–29).

St. Therese of Lisieux was once asked why there are so many non-Christians in the world. The co-patroness of the missions responded frankly, “Because of the laziness of Christians in not bringing them the good news.” Those words, I think, could have come straight from the Lord's mouth. In today’s Gospel, He looked with compassion on the helpless and abandoned crowds, because they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus doubtless looks at so many in today's world with the same pity, because so many are like shepherd-less sheep, searching for direction, lost in the cosmos. They don’t hear the Good Shepherd’s voice, and so they tune in the voice of strangers and follow them into danger.

Today, as then, Jesus’ response to these crowds is to tell us: “The harvest is great, but the laborers are few, therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest.” He tells us first that the harvest is huge and that there are few doing it. Elsewhere He said to “lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest” (Jn. 4:35). We don't have to be a farmer to understand what will happen if we don't act when the fields are ripe—the produce will corrupt. It’s a call to URGENT ACTION that begins with prayer to the Harvest Master to send laborers into his harvest. Notice that Jesus has them pray for LABORERS—hard workers—and not just for “bodies” in his vineyard. The harvest needs people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty, to work up a sweat. Harvesting for Jesus is not a cushy air-conditioned job in a plush corner office. The Harvest needs folks who work.

Who are these laborers that the harvest needs? So often Catholics can look at this passage as a call to pray exclusively for priestly and religious vocations. That is clearly one application of this passage, which is why those in vocations work often use it. The whole Church needs to pray more insistently for these vineyard laborers in an age when a shortage is already here and will become more acute. One of the reasons for the shortage of vocations, I’m convinced, is that Catholics are not praying for vocations as much they used to, both as individuals and within families. I’d like to ask you to begin to reverse that trend. Please make a commitment to pray—whether it be an Our Father, or a short vocations prayer, or a decade of the Rosary—each day for priestly and religious vocations. The Lord set it up so that He would send vocations in response to our prayer, so let’s keep our end of the deal.

But priests and religious are not the only hard workers the Harvest Master needs in His vineyard. I think back to the episode in the life of the prophet Isaiah, when he heard the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah's response was not to think about all the others. His response is the response God wants from all of us. He said, “Here am I, Lord; send me!” (Is. 6:8) The fields are ripe for the harvest, and all of us, as God's chosen ones, have a role in bringing in that harvest. No one gets a pass. If we think we do, we’re not really Jesus’ disciples, for Jesus said, “The one who doesn't gather with me scatters” (Mt. 12:30). Jesus says there's no way to be neutral: we either gather and labor in His vineyard, or we scatter His produce. Every Catholic is called to be a laborer in that vineyard. Each one of us is called to gather with Him. To each of us Jesus says, “I appointed YOU to go and bear fruit that will last” (Jn. 15:16).