An audio version of today's gospel and reflection can be accessed here.
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Today’s gospel (Matthew 9:32-37) sees Jesus cure a demoniac
to which the Pharisees respond by concluding He is in league with the devil himself.
He goes about Israel, proclaiming the good news, healing those who are sick and
reconciling those lost in their sins. Having given this example, His heart is
filled with compassion for those He ministers to, and He says to his
disciples: The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few..
On one level, this gospel is especially about the priestly
vocation, the vocation to be a labourer in the vineyard of the Lord, and to
gather in the harvest in due season. No matter the criticisms of Pharisees and
others, the priest must pursue the work of the Lord out of compassion for the
multitude. Nevertheless, these duties of the priesthood are paralleled by a
wider collective duty imposed on all of us, and that we reflect on all too
little, to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into
his harvest. Parishes are being closed or amalgamated all over our country
and in other European countries. Diocesan quangos with multiple MBAs are
writing the taglines about being “Ready for mission” or “Sent to bear fruit”,
but evangelical bromides can never cover up the corporate failure of self-knowledge.
If we lament our lack of priests or the sadly ageing priesthood, we should also
collectively lament, first, our failure to honour the vocation that feeds the
priestly production line, the vocation of marriage with its call to fruitfulness,
and second, our collective sin of omission to hear and obey this command of the
Lord to beg for the extraordinary blessing of priestly vocations. If we do not
sow with the Carmelites in prayer and sacrifice, we will not reap like the apostles.
In one sense, of course, all vocations are extraordinary.
What a thing it is, what a beautiful thing it is, for the Lord to call our name
and to say to us: Follow me.
If a man serves me, he must follow me, wherever I am, my
servant must be there too.
At the root of our personal vocations and the paths we take
in our lives is this wider command, the universal call to holiness, to be
conformed to the image of Christ, as adopted children of the Father so that He
find in us the image of His son.
And yet the priestly vocation includes that conformity to
Christ which encompasses His own relationship with His Mystical Body, the
Church. People often prefer the language of the “people of God” these
days, but that can be a very public and collective sort of phrase. The term the
“Mystical Body”, celebrated by Pope Pius XII in his letter Mystici Corporis,
says something not only deeply Pauline but also deeply intimate and spiritual, just
as the body is intimate and spiritual, the person – the individual - incarnate.
Now, the priest, the labourer who is sent to the harvest, shares Christ’s role
as the privileged intimate partner of the Mystical Body. For only Christ as
high priest, as head of the Mystical Body, ministers to that body, gives to it
the spousal gifts of the seven Sacraments, and so helps it become day by day
His worthy spouse, and fruitful beyond all measure.
This incidentally is why the priesthood cannot be reduced to
a mere social function, to be seized on and instrumentalised by any individual,
whether because they are socially privileged, or because of some ambient gender
equality that is blind to the mystery that it represents. The sin of
clericalism, an excessive reverence for the clergy, is only the opposite vice
of anticlericalism, an excessive disrespect for the clergy. Somewhere in the
middle stands a proper spiritually anchored and wisely tempered reverence for
the priest as an icon of Christ, symbolised so beautifully in the customs of
our Syro-Malakara or Syro-Malabar brothers and sisters who kiss the hands of
their priests - not as an act of priestcraft but because the priest too is a
kind of sacrament, the outward human sign of the inward grace of Christ who
acts through him.
Every individual can reflect Christ in some way; this is the
universal call to holiness. But just as in the Sacrament of the Eucharist only
the foodstuffs of bread and wine can be turned into the body and blood of
Christ for our spiritual nourishment, so in the Sacrament of Holy Orders, only
a man can be made the icon of Christ's relationship with His spouse, the
Church.
And in some mysterious way, the relationship is reciprocal.
The priest who has left home and family and brothers and sisters and wealth
can, if he lives the mystery of his priesthood in the spirit of Christ,
discover that he is repaid a hundredfold in this life. For just as we have a
duty to pray for more labourers to be sent into the harvest, so we have a duty
to care for the labourers who are already there, men who are both privileged
and afflicted by a calling which, according to some, requires of them all to be
crucified before the end.
In answer to the many betrayals by priests who have become
abusers, we have often heard tell of the serious difficulties of the
priesthood. These should not be underestimated, of course. But no vocation can
be understood and grasped only by its difficulties. Every vocation has its
difficulties. The spirit of a culture of vocation is found rather in the beauty
and the truth of every vocation. Perhaps, if we were to understand the beauty
of our own vocations, we would live them with greater fidelity. For we love our
grumbles and groans. But how much more have we cause to find in the blessed
calling which each and every one of us has been given a glimpse of – just a
small glimpse – the beauty of our loving God who pours out His heart for every
one of us, even to the ultimate sacrifice of laying down His earthly life.
Every vocation then includes a calling to understand His
compassion. Instead of looking down at our own misery, we should look up to try
to catch in our Master’s eye that eternal compassion, His willingness to look
upon the crowds who are harassed and helpless, casting upon them the gaze of a
Shepherd who wishes to gather the sheep to Himself. And then, fixing it in our
memories, we should go and try to share that same compassion wherever we can.
