The look of love

An audio version of today's gospel and reflection can be accessed here.

****

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.