Homily for Thursday, Week 26 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Thursday
26th Week of Ordinary Time

Oct. 3, 2024
Luke 10: 1-12
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

“Ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Luke 10: 2).

Sending out the 72 (Tissot)

As we know, the Church is the continuation of Jesus’ mission of redemption in time and space, “from the rising of the sun to its setting” (EP III).  So Jesus chooses apostles and, today, “72 other disciples” to preach the Good News “until the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

He instructs us not only to preach but also to pray.  Not everyone can preach (except by the manner of one’s life), but everyone can pray.  When our apostolic activity is limited by age, infirmity, or even particular responsibility, prayer’s always possible.  St. Therese, whose memorial we kept 2 days ago, was a great missionary from within her convent thru her prayer and sacrificial love for her sisters.

So we can be missionaries by praying for men and women who bring Jesus’ Good News to foreign lands—and to our own land, so much in need of the new evangelization that St. John Paul and Pope Benedict spoke of.  “The harvest is abundant” (Luke 10:2), and the harvest master desires that it be reaped and gathered into his barn (Matt 13:30).  As St. Paul says, “God wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4).  3 verses later, Paul identifies himself as “teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth” (2:7).

We pray for everyone’s salvation and knowledge of divine truth thru Jesus Christ.  Perhaps we also have opportunity to encourage and support individual evangelizers and catechists.