FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
(Green) Cycle C/Year II (July 3, 2016)
Is 66:10-14/Gal 6:14-18/Lk 10:1-9
Jesus sends His disciples to towns and villages He intends to visit and says to the: “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Lk 10:2). The mission of the disciples is the work of the laborers and the disciples are the laborers themselves. They are sent by Jesus to proclaim the good news of salvation to different places and communities; they have to make Jesus known throughout the world. Jesus knows that His laborers are not enough to evangelize the world and so He asks His disciples to pray to God the Father to send out laborers.
For 2,000 years, the disciples of Jesus have been proclaiming the gospel of Christ to different parts of the world. As a result, Christianity is the biggest religion throughout the world. But still, a lot of people do not know Jesus Christ, the only way towards God and eternal salvation. And for those places which have been evangelized for a long time, people have become lax in their Christian faith so that they have become nominal Christians. Both the pagans and the nominal Christians need to know Jesus Christ and to have a personal relationship with Him. But there is no way for them to encounter Jesus and know Him unless there are Christians who are willing to sacrifice their time, effort, ambitions, and even life in order to proclaim the gospel of Christ to them. With His words to His 72 disciples, Jesus is now appealing to the present disciples to go out and become laborers in the vineyard of the Lord. Jesus is appealing to all of us Christians to become proclaimers of the good news of salvation to others.
The gospel for this Sunday also tells us the requirements for us to become good missionaries to others. We need to live a simple life. While we cannot avoid material concerns and needs, we are however capable of freeing our minds and hearts from focusing on those things and loving them. A Christian cannot live a luxurious life since Jesus lived all His earthly life in poverty. We must also focus on our goal. The goal is not our ambitions in life; the goal of a Christian is eternal salvation. When we focus our daily activities on the second life, we know that what we do are the things that really matter, things that are connected to loving God and serving our neighbor.
We have to realize that when we share Jesus with others, we do not think of what we can get from them. Religious things are not meant for business but for service. We serve the people by giving Christ to them and we must never use Christ in order to enrich us. We must realize that it is our responsibility, as Christians, to share Jesus Christ with others. We cannot simply live our Christian faith by ourselves. Such faith is meant to share with others and if we do not do it, we are not fulfilling our obligation. Finally, we should never reject the call of Christ to become His laborers in this present world. Christ, our Lord and Savior, is calling us to share God’s love with others. There is no valid reason for us to not heed and obey His words. To follow Jesus is to obey His teachings and will.
