LABORERS OF PEACE! ~ CookingFood.Org

“SEEDS OF LIFE”

Sunday, 3rd July 2016.

Fourteenth Week of Ordinary Time

Isa 66: 10-14;

Ps 66: 1-7, 16, 20;

Gal 6: 14-18;

Lk 10: 1-12, 17-20.

LABORERS OF PEACE!

“The harvest is great and the laborers are few.” Certainly these words of Jesus must have seemed true for the early Christians as they lived in relatively tiny communities. At the time, the Church was truly like the tiny mustard seed or the small measure of yeast swallowed up in a large batch of dough. Today, there are over one billion Christians in the world, about one fifth of the world population. Those early laborers clearly did not work in vain. The mustard seed grew into a large tree providing shelter for thousands. The invisible yeast worked its influence on the seemingly inert dough. To put in another way, four out of five people have not yet accepted the Way of Jesus.

Among a billion Christians, how many could be deemed as active laborers in God’s vineyard? For the harvest is still great, and generally by “laborers” we think of priests, or religious brothers and sisters, those who have a “vocation”. However, it is doubtful that Jesus was thinking of priests and religious when he spoke those words. In fact, in the world of the New Testament there were no priests or religious as we understand those terms today. In the mind of Jesus – and in the mind of the early evangelists – everyone who was known as a follower of Christ was expected to be a laborer in the harvest field. Paul, for instance, was an apostle, a great preacher and evangelizer but he was not a bishop or a priest, He was a layman and made his living as a tentmaker.

Christianity is not an end in itself. It is simply a very effective, and, we believe, the most effective way, of becoming that altogether new kind of human person that Jesus and Paul speak about. This new person has a deep sense of both God’s utter transcendence and utter immanence, the God who constantly calls us beyond where we are and who, at the same time, deeply penetrates our being and our every experience. This new person lives a life of perfect integrity and truth, a life of deep compassion and concern. This new person lives in freedom and peace. One word that occurs in all three readings today is “peace”. Isaiah, in the First Reading, speaks of God sending “flowing peace, like a river”. Paul speaks of the peace and mercy that come to all who become that transformed person in Jesus Christ. And, in the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples to bring peace with them to every house they enter. This peace is not dependent on outside circumstances. It can exist even when we are surrounded by storms. It is the peace Jesus experienced after his prayer in the garden. It is the peace that Paul experiences, even though he has had his share of the “cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” and who bears in his own body the marks of Jesus’ pain and suffering.

So our task as Christians is to be bringers of peace. Of course, we need that peace and inner security within ourselves first of all. It is a peace that a close following of Jesus can bring. We are called today to become laborers with Jesus in the harvest that is the society in which we live. It is a society that seems so rich and prosperous and yet is so impoverished of the security and peace it so frantically seeks to find. We are called today to labor so that our society may be gradually transformed into a place where the values of the Gospel, often so little understood even by ourselves, will prevail.

Prayer: Lord! Help us to be messengers of your peace to the world. Amen

(This reflection is an extract from www.livingspace.ie)