From the Word of the Day
“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; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.’…Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”
(Matthew 9: 35- 10: 8)
How should we live this Word
Today’s Gospel celebrates God’s gratuitous love. Jesus saw that the crowds following Him were troubled and abandoned, and He had pity on them. Thus, we see the rarely used word ‘pity’ return again; evocative of a mother’s feeling for her child. Jesus saw them like sheep without a shepherd, but they also appeared as a ripe harvest that needed laborers, who were few. He encourages us to pray for the workers with insistence.
We are living an historic time that is quite dark, as we experience the tragedies of Paris and Belgium, and even within the Church herself. But we must not become discouraged. No era is too dark for God’s mercy; there is no tempest that can submerge the Church. We are certain that God loves us and will never abandon us. He always renews the prodigy of His gratuitous salvation of the Church at the moment it seems to be drowning.
Jesus assures us that God has the heart of a shepherd and sends shepherds to His tired people. As soon as the Savior was aware of the tiredness of the crowds, He sent His twelve apostles who followed Him to help them; so too today, the loving mercy of God is always ready to raise up prophets and pastors to tend to the people. In fact, Divine Providence has sent to our Church today, many holy pastors, especially in the person of our wise and compassionate Pope Francis. He has given us an enormous gift in the Jubilee of Mercy that will accompany us throughout the new liturgical year and that will begin on December 8, feast of the Immaculate Conception, and the fiftieth anniversary of the close of Vatican Council II.
In my pause for silent contemplation, I will thank Jesus for His great and merciful love and I will do my part as a worker in His fields as I pray for many more to come.
Jesus, grant workers for Your harvest and help me to do my part.
The Voice of Andre Louf, Abbot of Monts-de-Cats
The discomfort and misery that sometimes assail us are never so great as to be more than God’s mercy, which defeats and covers all the weaknesses of the Church.
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