Labourers and lambs

A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today's gospel (Luke 10:1-9) takes a step back to an earlier chapter in order to honour the feast of the evangelist Saint Luke. In this passage, Jesus commissions seventy-two disciples to go out to preach the gospel, to gather in the harvest, as He says. He gives them a series of seemingly complex instructions, less about what they will say, and more about their conduct and self-bearing. There are two injunctions about what must be said. The first is to tell the people that the kingdom of God is very near to you. The second - although this is left out of the extract in today’s Mass - concerns what to say to towns that do not receive them well: We wipe off the very dust of your town that clings to our feet, and leave it with you. Yet be sure of this: the kingdom of God is very near. And Jesus tells the seventy-two: on the great day it will be more bearable for Sodom than for that town. Sobering thoughts, and ones that are God’s mystery to unfold to us.

But, in all this passage, in addition to the injunctions about what to do, there are two observations of Jesus that tell the seventy-two who they are: they are labourers and they are lambs.

They are labourers because God usually works through secondary means. He does not dominate the world like a Greek god; and yet He might have chosen to do so. He might have chosen to be the divine superstar, a better-quality A-list panjandrum, drawing all and sundry from the four corners of the world. But this was not His way.

Instead, He made His disciples the members of His Mystical Body, and through that Mystical Body He bestrides the world, to serve His Father in all things, and - as He says here – to gather in the harvest. This is why the sins of the members of the Church are more grievous than the sins of others, because when they depart from the way, they sully the image of Christ in the world. The bishops are His chief labourers, assisted by their presbyterates, but every one of us is called to do our part in the evangelization of the world, even a world that has no time for the gospel message. In such labour, He is the measure of our success and the source of any fruitfulness. We cannot be anxious about what we might do, but only beg Him to make us docile instruments in his hands. We are unprofitable servants, even if we only do what we ought to.

But while we are labourers, Jesus also sends us out as lambs among wolves. This is perhaps one of His less consoling metaphors, and yet in another way, it is one that brings us closer to Him than that of labourer. How is it then that we are like lambs?

Firstly, we are like lambs because we are baptised in His death and resurrection. For he is the Lamb whose great, heavenly feast is celebrated in His parables; He is the lamb, likewise, who is sacrificed in order to save the world from the death of sin. And the extraordinary thing is that we are made like Him, made adopted sons and daughters of the Father through Him, conformed to the image of Christ, transformed by His grace. Of course we are lambs; we can be nothing else if we are true to Him.

Second, being lambs is an indication of the innocence to which He calls us. For our souls remain a battleground, and despite all we do to try to surrender to Him, we find ourselves rebels. It is not pious cant in the mouths of the saints when they say that they are sinners. In their total dependence on Him, they continue to heed His call to carry their cross, and to do penance, for the Bridegroom is no longer with them. This path of purgation is an indispensable element of the Christian life, for without it we cannot be the lambs He asks us to be.

Third, being a lamb means also not being a wolf, and yet we all have our own inner wolf. We may not be the rapacious, bloodthirsty predator that the word first evokes. But we are wolves in some dreadful ways, unconsciously exploitative, unthinkingly engaged in a search for influence or popularity, neglectful about cultivating what is around us, for wolves sow no fields but prosper by theft.

Unlike lambs, who prosper by enjoying what has been given to them by the hands of the Good Shepherd, whose choice of pastures is sometimes bewildering, but unquestionably drawn from His infinite wisdom. And it is there that He intends for us to be to receive His gifts and to share them with others.