I remember my dad talking about the “Great Depression” in the United States. There were many willing workers, but jobs were almost impossible to find. Today we live in the reverse situation. Jobs are plentiful—almost every store has “help wanted” signs in front of them—but people do not want to work.
When Jesus was on this earth, he noted a similar problem. There was much work to be done, but few willing to do it. We hear about this in today’s gospel account (Matthew 9:32-38).
“Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, and curing every disease and illness. At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because 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…’”
An oppressed people who long lived in darkness, came alive when they saw Jesus. He proclaimed that a new day had dawned on creation. God was visiting the earth to establish his reign here. When Jesus looked into the faces of these people, his heart was grieved, because they were like lost and battered sheep who had no shepherd to take care of them. He realized that the crowds who swarmed around him were but a sampling of the lost sheep of the world. Struck down by sin and its results, people groped around in darkness looking for an answer to life. Jesus was, and still is, that answer. Souls were ready to be harvested, but there were few to go out and gather them in.
Then he gave this word to his disciples:
“…so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”
Did we catch this message? The disciples of Jesus had the power to get God to move. It was part of their job to “ask the master” to send out more laborers—new Jesus’s to bring his love to the world and win souls into his sheepfold.
What prompted Jesus to say this was that “his heart was moved with pity.” Many of his disciples, later, became the laborers Jesus talked about. Many others became the intercessors who implored God through prayer and fasting to send out more missionaries into the world to proclaim the Gospel of hope to the lost sheep of the world.
This great mission that Jesus spoke of all began in his heart– it was moved with pity. When we invite Jesus into our own hearts, our hearts become like his. Among other things we develop a hunger for souls and a desire to see more and more souls reaped into the Kingdom of God. Some of us are called to be laborers; all of us are called to be “askers.” We recall St. Therese of Lisieux who had the heart of a missionary. She longed to go out into the world and help win the lost back to God. Being restricted, however, to the confines of her small convent, here only way to harvest souls was through intercessory prayer. So powerful were here prayers that she has been declared by the Catholic Church co-patron of missionaries.
In an age when many do not have the desire to do the world’s work, we pray that the Holy Spirit will move many to do God’s work on earth. We pray that we have missionary hearts, that move us daily to prayer and action.
“I am the Good Shepherd, I know my sheep…” (John 10:14).
