Saturday of the First Week of Advent
The gospel describes Jesus’ take on the situation: The harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few.” Waiting in line for 30 minutes at the airport to get coffee has made me acutely aware of the consequences of a labor shortage, but perhaps Jesus had something more serious in mind than my morning expresso. This passage is often used in vocation literature promoting the priesthood and religious life. But the harvest is so plenty that there is plenty of work to go around! One of the greatest compliments we receive as Christians is that we are all called to be co-workers in bringing about the Kingdom of Christ. We often ignore those moments when we could be means of Christian witness, thinking the job should be left to the mighty and powerful. Well, that image doesn’t have much currency in the gospels which instead sees the movement of the kingdom as imaged by a grain of yeast (small) or a mustard seed (perhaps smaller). No greater nor more successful work of the devil occurs than the seduction of thinking I’m too insignificant or too small to do any good.