Word from the Pastor

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus sends us to proclaim that his kingdom is at hand.
Exodus 19:2-6a, Romans 5:6-11, Matthew 9:36 - 10:8

Dear parish family,​

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples to pray that the master of the harvest will send out laborers. Immediately after that, he invests them with power and sends them out to preach and to work miracles.

When we pray for more laborers in the vineyard, we might imagine that God will answer this prayer by calling many men into the priesthood. While we certainly need more good priests, this Gospel helps us to see that God doesn’t want us to just pray for more priests or somebody else to go and spread the Good News. God wants to send us!

By asking the disciples to pray to the Father to send laborers to gather the harvest, Jesus was inviting them into a space where their hearts could become more open to being sent out by the Lord. Indeed, God wants us to pray for this same need, so that we in turn might grow in our awareness of his desire to send us out on that same mission. For the kingdom of God to grow, it takes all of us.

In the first reading, God told the people they would be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. We have also been called to be priests, prophets, and kings. We were anointed at our baptism and so share in the mission of Jesus.

As members of the priesthood of the faithful, we have the duty to pray and sacrifice for others. One of the best ways to do this is by active participation in the Mass. The congregation shares in the sacrifice offered by the ordained priest by joining their hearts and their lives to the Eucharistic sacrifice. As we pray together in this liturgy, we can also offer the needs of relatives, the Church, and the world.

As prophets, we need to give public witness to the Gospel. This might look different for each of us. Not everyone needs to go to the ambo and preach a sermon, but we all need to preach a sermon with our lives. Do the people around us know we are followers of Christ? Do they know it not only by our words, but also by the way we act? Can they see it in our love and unity?

And as kings, we need to be the servants of all. The kingship of Jesus isn’t about having power. A true king is concerned for the welfare of his people. We can pray for the sick, the lonely, and the poor, but we also have to be willing to be the ones sent to help them.

Saint Paul offers a good reminder in the second reading that the mission of Jesus was to give his life for all of us, even though we were sinners. We also have a share in this mission of reconciliation. As priests, prophets, and kings, we can labor in the Church and in the world for the salvation of all.

Let us ask our Eucharistic Lord to help us to respond to his call to mission. May he give us the strength to do so.

Fr. Jean Jadotte
Pastor