Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Sometimes if I look out on the parish community during a Mass or celebration I sometimes think where will we be in twenty years or where is everyone else. Yet if the Lord looks out on that same crowd, he would see a teaming harvest ready to be reaped. For the last two weeks I have been visiting parishioners we have not seen in a few years and it has been a wonderful experience for me to see people at home and with their families and thrilled that they got a visitor. It is a much more accurate picture than what I see when I am here.
I was at a wedding recently where I was touched by how the parents of the groom were praying so intensely at the consecration and during the whole Eucharist. I can only imagine what they must have been thinking or what they saw in their hearts compared to when they first arrived in the country forty years ago. They came without anything, without any contacts and knowledge of the country. They came knowing that God had a mission for them. Now they have over twenty-five grandchildren and there are new seminaries that they helped start, many vocations, many couples willing to have all the children God sends them, and many, many people back in the Church, and many other miracles.
So it seems to me that Jesus is saying to these seventy-two disciples (and us), pray that ‘YOU’ will be transformed into workers in this amazing harvest. He first sends out the Twelve and now he sends out seventy-two and the next time who knows how many he will send. The sending out is what changes them into true laborers for the harvest!!
The Lord has a new title in this gospel: the Lord of the Harvest. He is trying to instill this vision in these seventy-two disciples, and in us. He is not giving a solution to a problem but transforming them from workers to learners, or disciples. He is giving them the same vision that he has with his Father and with his Holy Spirit. He wants us to have the same sentiments, desires, and interests as he.
There is one condition that he gives them in this gospel. That they have to be sent out or behave as lambs, and then they will be victorious. If they behave as wolves, they are lost; they will no longer have a shepherd. If the Lord goes away it is because they don’t allow him to be their shepherd. They think they know better or can do it themselves.
Jesus knows the difficulties when they are defenseless, and it might look like stupidity to not have money or sandals or connections. They could falsely think if they were smarter, they would not be in this situation. But their strength comes from this weakness and precariousness. The sufferings that they endure are the glorious marks that St. Paul says he bears on his body. The list that he gives to the Corinthians is overwhelming: five times beaten with thirty-nine lashes, three times beaten with sticks, stoned once, three times shipwrecked, one day and one night in the open sea, many times without food or drink, in danger from thieves or his people or from gentiles, and always with the anxiety of thinking of the communities of Christians that he started…it is awesome.
These disciples go out stripped of their weapons, without any superpowers, only with the power to heal, save and enlighten, never to destroy anything.
It sounds too simple but perhaps the most important thing we can do in order to be workers or disciples, is to pray for the people close to us. First of all, those in our families. To speak with God about them, one by one, asking for light for them so they can understand their sufferings. Praying will help us to see the Lord, as truly the Lord of the Harvest, and how much he wants us to be like him.