Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

I am fifty years ordained a priest next month. My first appointment was to Dundrum parish, where I spent three very happy years. At that time in the late 1970s many parishes had prayer groups inspired by the Charismatic Renewal Movement. Shortly after arriving in the parish, I soon discovered there was a lively charismatic renewal prayer group. It became one of my spiritual homes during my three years there. I made many good friends through it. There was much singing at those prayer meetings and I still remember a line from one of the songs that was regularly sung, ‘Freely, freely, you have received. Freely, freely, give’. It was inspired by the saying of Jesus at the end of today’s gospel reading, ‘You received without charge, give without charge’.

There are two parts to that saying. The first part is the good news that Jesus preached. ‘You received without charge’. God, through his Son, has poured out his love upon us, without asking us to work for it or deserve it. As Saint Paul says in today’s second reading, ‘What proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners’. Most people in that parish prayer group had been practising Catholics all their lives. Yet, through the charismatic renewal movement, many of them had a deep experience of the gospel for the first time. They came to appreciate the good news of the Lord’s unconditional love for them, a love that was given freely to all through the Holy Spirit, a love that didn’t have to be earned but was just waiting to be received. As we open our hearts to the free gift of the Lord’s love for us, our relationship with the Lord can come alive in a new way.

The second part of the saying of Jesus is the call that flows from this good news, ‘give without charge’. Because God has freely and generously given his love to us through his Son and the Holy Spirit, we are to give to others as we have received. As Jesus calls on us in the gospel of John, ‘Love one another as I have loved you’, and as Saint Paul declares in his letter to the Colossians, ‘Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive’. When we allow the gospel of the Lord’s gracious love to sink into our hearts, we will be empowered to live this call of the gospel, to love others freely and unconditionally. Many people who were deeply touched by the Lord through the charismatic renewal wanted to serve others in some way. They wanted to share with others what they themselves had received. They often became more active members of their parish community. In the words of today’s gospel reading, they were drawn to becoming labourers in the Lord’s harvest. They allowed the Holy Spirit to inspire them to use their gifts in the service of the community. If we can allow ourselves to be deeply touched by the Lord’s love for us, if we can come to say in the words of Saint Paul, ‘I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’, then we too will be moved to become a labourer in the Lord’s harvest. We will find some corner of the Lord’s huge harvest where our gifts will be of service to others.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus sends out his disciples as labourers in God’s harvest, because he was moved with compassion for the crowds of people who were harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd. Before sending them out, he first called on them to ‘ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest’. We might wonder why Jesus doesn’t just ask God to send labourers into the harvest himself. After all, he had a unique relationship with God, as God’s only Son. His prayer is surely more powerful than ours. It is likely he did ask God in prayer to send labourers into his harvest. Yet, he also asked his disciples, and asks all of us, to pray this prayer of petition too. He knew that what we pray for reveals what is important to us. In asking us to petition God to send labourers into his harvest, Jesus wants us to show that the task of shepherding the harassed and dejected really matters to us. In asking us to pray for this intention, he asking us to take some responsibility for this important work of his, by showing the same compassion to the harassed and dejected among us as he did. All of the gospels show Jesus to be a good shepherd to the lost, the broken, the grieving, the isolated, and he needs all of us to share in his work of shepherding. We cannot pray that prayer Jesus asks us to pray without offering ourselves to God as labourers in his harvest. There is some shepherding role that each of us can fulfil in the service of the Lord’s people. Much of this pastoral care goes on in our parishes quietly. It happens in homes and in neighbourhoods. Whenever and wherever it happens, we are proclaiming by our lives, in the words of the gospel reading, ‘The kingdom of heaven is close at hand’.