Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time • Year C

In the passage of the gospel which has just been read I am being urged to investigate, and as best I can to say, what harvest it is about which the Lord says The harvest is plentiful, but laborers few. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest (Lk 10:2). Then to the twelve disciples whom he also called apostles he added seventy-two others, and sent them all, as is clear from his own words, into the harvest that was ready and waiting. So what was that harvest? I mean, that harvest cannot have been among those nations where nothing had been sown. So it remains for us to understand that this harvest was to be found among the Jewish people. This was the harvest which the Lord of the harvest came to. To this harvest he sent reapers; to the nations, on the other hand, he sent not reapers but sowers. So we can take it that this harvest was gathered among the Jewish people. That was the harvest, you see, from which the apostles themselves were chosen. That was where it was ripe for the reaping, because that was where the prophets had sown.

It is a pleasure to contemplate God’s husbandry, and to be delighted by his gifts, and to work in his fields. It was at this husbandry, you see, that that man worked who said, I labored more than all of them. But wasn’t the strength to work given him by the Lord of the harvest? That’s why he added, Not I, though, but the grace of God with me (1 Cor 15:10). That he was engaged in husbandry he shows clearly enough when he says, I planted, Apollo watered (1 Cor 3:6).

So, your attention, please. Let it be your pleasure too to contemplate with me in God’s agricultural policy two harvests, one complete, one yet to come; complete in the Jewish people, yet to come in the peoples of the nations. Let me prove this; and how else, but from the scriptures of the Lord of the harvest? Why, we have it right here, stated in this very passage: The harvest is plentiful, the laborers few. So ask the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest. I have undertaken, you see, to show you the harvest among the peoples among whom the prophets had preached; the reason, after all, why they had been sowers was in order that the apostles might be able to be reapers.

But now listen to this stated more explicitly still: The Lord said to the disciples, You say that summer is still a long way off. Lift up your eyes and see the lands white for the harvest; and he added, Others labored, and you have entered into their labors (Jn 4:35, 38). Abraham labored, and Isaac, Jacob and Moses, the prophets. They labored at sowing. On the coming of the Lord, the harvest was found to be ripe. Reapers were sent in with the sickle of the gospel, and carried their sheaves to the Lord’s threshing floor, where Stephen would be threshed.

Such then should Christ’s apostles be, preachers of the gospel, not greeting on the road; that is, not looking for something else, but proclaiming the gospel out of genuine brotherly love, let them come to the house and say, Peace be to this house. They don’t only say it with their lips; they pour out what they are full of. They preach peace, and they have peace. They are not like those of whom it is said, Peace, peace, and there is no peace (Jer 8:11). What’s the meaning of Peace, peace, and there is no peace? They preach it and don’t have it; they praise and don’t love it; they say and they don’t do (Mt 23:3). As for you, though, be sure you accept peace, whether Christ is being proclaimed casually or with sincerity. So then, if someone is full of peace and gives the greeting, Peace be to this house, if there is a son of peace there, his peace will rest on that person.