Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

The Master of the Harvest

In 2012, as reported by Wikipedia, the most used encyclopedia in the Internet, there were 7 billion persons in the world. Only 2 billion of these were designated as Christians. The remaining 5 billion were members of other religions like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism, and others.

It is now 2016 and the figures understandingly have grown but we do not know precisely how the increase has been distributed among the religions in the world. We do know a somewhat disturbing fact for us: Islam is by far the fastest growing religion in the world and at the end of the twentieth century there were more Muslims than Catholics. At the end of that century there were only 1.2 billion Catholics but there were 1.7 billion Muslims, a difference of half a billion or 500 million. Thirty years before this period there were only 571 million Muslims while the Catholics were a billion already. The estimate of statisticians or those who study numbers is that by the year 2100, only 84 years from now, there will be more Muslims than Christians, not just Catholics, in the world. If the trend continues by that time there will be only 34 percent of the world population who will be Christians. The other 66 percent or more than 7 billion people will still be non-Christians.

This only means that as the year increases in number the persons to be harvested for the kingdom of God also increase. The harvest will continue to be abundant but the laborers are few. Jesus' words will still be true.

Again according to some statisticians in the world in the year 2011 there were 6 million laborers in the different churches. This included bishops, priests, deacons, catechists, preachers, missionaries, Bible teachers, and so forth. Understandably these numbers have increased but compared to the abundant harvest, the laborers are still few.

The statement of Jesus in our Gospel reading today is truer now than ever: "The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few."

There have been many attempts to gather more and more people into the kingdom of God, but so far these have not made an impact that makes a difference. In the early Church its harvesting of people for the kingdom made such an impact that some close observers noted that the Christians "have turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6 AV). In our time the Christians have not turned the world upside down. The opposite has been true. The world has turned the Christians upside down in their values. One preacher, Paul Washer, in his sermon DO YOU SEE GOD WORKING ON YOUR LIFE, said, "We have a great majority of the people in America claiming to be Christian and they live like devils." The world has made them live like devils, instead of them making the worldly people live like Christians. Indeed the world has made these Christians turned upside down in their values. 

The solution to the problem of having an abundant harvest but few laborers was provided by Jesus. He said, ". . . ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest" (Luke 10:2).

This master of the harvest is Jesus himself. In our Gospel reading he sends out 72 laborers to harvest persons in the villages of Galilee for the kingdom. For him harvesting means announcing to the people that the kingdom of God has come near to them and curing their sick.

Only Jesus knows who will be harvested and how this harvesting will be done. He knows those whom the God the Father has given him. He knows also how to draw them to himself. 

Until when do we ask Jesus to send out laborers for his harvest? Of course, until the harvest is finished. We have to keep on asking that he sends laborers into his harvest until the harvest is finished. We do not do this only during vocation month when we ask God to call men and women to the religious life or the priesthood.

Harvesting here does not mean making people Catholics or Protestants or members of any church. It means making people realize that God's reign has come into their lives, that God wants to rule over their lfe, that God wants to give them a completely new life, a life controlled by God himself. This means that even in our churches if there are persons who are living away from the grace of God they need also to be harvested for the kingdom of God.

There will be an end to this harvesting. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation or Apocalypse, we read that an angel shouted with a loud voice saying, "Use your sickle and cut down the harvest, for now is the time to reap, the earth's harvest is fully ripe" (14:15). That will be the time when the final harvest will take place and there will be no need to ask Jesus to send laborers to harvest. The harvest will be over.

Let this be our prayer, to ask Jesus to send laborers into his harvest. It is primarily his harvest.  

Let us bow our heads in prayer. Lord Jesus, you are the master of the harvest. You told us that the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few. Today the situation is still the same. Billions of people need to be harvested for the kingdom but there are still few laborers. You told us to ask you to send laborers into the harvest. And that is what we do now. Please send more laborers into the harvest. For the glory of your Father and our Father in the power of the Holy Spirit we ask this petition. Amen.