26th Week in Ord. Time, Thursday – 1st October 2020 — Gospel: Lk 10,1-12
Certainty of a Great Harvest
The successful missionary work of Jesus and his disciples is depicted as a plentiful harvest. Jesus uses a farming analogy to tell about the certainty of a great harvest. While the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, saw the common people as chaff to be destroyed and burned up; Jesus saw them as a harvest to be reaped and to be saved. The Pharisees in their pride looked for destruction of sinners; Jesus in love died for the salvation of sinners. The labourers, Jesus’ followers, need to see the people as Jesus saw them – as plentiful, precious, perplexed and perishing.
In this harvest metaphor, Jesus also introduces God as the owner of the field of his work and emphasizes the greater need to pray for his mission. Although the disciples sometimes experience rejection, there is still much positive response to the gospel. Yet there are not enough labourers to reap the harvest. So Jesus tells his disciples to plead with the Owner, “the Lord of the harvest,” to send workers into the fields so that the missionary task will grow. The Lord of the harvest provides with the perfect seeds, ideal weather, necessary sunlight, and sufficient rainfall. However few reapers are confronting a vast harvest field. Therefore the disciples need to go to the Lord of the harvest and tell him of the situation in order to organize the whole harvesting of God’s chosen ones.
