10 July 2018
Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”. This has perhaps become a hackneyed phrase. More than twenty years ago, a Jesuit priest wrote a law review article about hiring practices at religiously affiliated universities. This particular priest addressed a question about how religiously affiliated schools make their modest contribution to the work in the vineyard. More particularly, who gets chosen to be a laborer in bringing in the plentiful harvest? The laborer is the teacher or administrator, the vineyard is the religiously affiliated university or college. Consequently, he addressed employment practices: who gets hired as a laborer and by what criteria is this special kind of laborer hired.
Although we are living in the era of the ipad, icloud, and iphone, the phrase “the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” is still a true one. One of the reasons that we are still need of many laborers is because “Pharisee” are still around. The Pharisees in Matthew’s Gospel did not deny Jesus’ power as a healer, but they claimed that his power was from Satan. In the 21st century, the new “Pharisees” are those who believe in God, but they also believe in their own power and capacity to save the world.
In your prayers today, ask God what kind of work He wants you to do. What kind of people does He want you to work with? Where is the vineyard He wants you harvest? As God is the Lord of the Harvest, perhaps you need to ask for God’s grace to know and realize the difference between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man.