Homily: Oct 18 2016 - St. Luke - The Harvest is abundant...

On this feast of Saint Luke we hear his wonderful account of the sending—the mission—of the seventy-two disciples. Did you notice that the mission—the task of spreading the Gospel-- is not just for the twelve apostles. He sends not just his closest twelve, but 72, a number representative of all of his followers.

In our modern day it is sometimes a temptation to think that the mission of spreading the Gospel only belongs to priests and religious. Perhaps, it’s because we had so many priests and religious in years past, that we came to this false conclusion.

But Saint Luke was never ordained, he wasn’t a bishop, he wasn’t one of the twelve apostles. Saint Luke was a doctor who gave up his medical practice because he believed God had more important work for him to do—that it was more important to care for people’s broken souls than to care for their broken bodies.

St. Luke first encountered the Gospel through the preaching of St. Paul, and was so moved and inspired by Paul, that he left his medical practice and began to accompany Paul in his preaching mission. Little did Luke know, that God would have a unique work for him, he would become a biblical author—inspired by God he would write a two-volume work which we know today as Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles.

When we abandon ourselves to God, abandon ourselves to the mission, we find the Holy Spirit’s inspiration to do things we never imagined—we find the courage to leave our comfortable life, and dedicate ourselves to the most important task—the urgent and ever-necessary task of laboring to save souls. “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few”—how will you engage in this most important labor today?

For if not us? Who?

As we pray that the Master will send more laborers into the harvest, let us recognize what that means: that each of us will trust the Lord enough to engage in the labor he has in mind for us, that like Saint Luke, we will trust God enough, be so moved by the urgency of the mission, that we will have the courage to abandon the comfortable, to dedicate our efforts today and all days first and foremost for the glory of God and salvation of souls.