The readings today present us two very related themes. The first, is the call of Our Master to the task, or in other words, our vocation. The other, is the place within which, and for which, this vocation is to be lived out, the Church. It is within the Church alone that our vocation can make sense, for outside of it we have no life.
But I jump ahead of myself. I was led to this insight by two verses from the lectionary today, the first being the words of Our Lord in the Gospel:
The harvest is abundant but the
labourers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
We often pray for vocations, and particularly for vocations to religious life and the priesthood; but what is often missed in this prayer for vocations is that it is not only future priests who have been given a vocation. In fact, all of us, who through our baptism are configured to the triple office of Christ: of priest, prophet and king, have a vocation. Every Christian, has a vocation to support the proper worship of God, the task of the priest; all of us have an obligation to fulfill the task of the prophet – to preach and proclaim the kingdom of God; and all of us must appropriately be king – whether in our families, as father or mother, in our job; in charge of the tasks given to us by God; or as citizens, ensuring that we follow the rules of civilized society and in this way ensure that others too may follow the rules.
Understood in this sense, we now begin to understand the enormity of the task before us, and the shortage of labourers for this task.
The second prompt, I received was from the first reading from today’s lectionary. Speaking through the Prophet Isaiah, the Lord says:
Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad
because of her,
all you who love her;
And then again:
Lo, I will spread prosperity over
Jerusalem like a river,
and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent.
As nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms,
and fondled in her lap;
as a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.
Now, we know that the reference to Jerusalem in scripture has traditionally been understood to mean our Holy Mother Church. And so, what Isaiah is teaching us, is that our salvation is not to be obtained individually, but in the company of others, and in the embrace of Jerusalem. In the Church, we are all one. We are all members of the Church, the head of whom is Jesus Christ Our Lord. The members of the body must, therefore, cooperate with each other and work with each other. This is our vocation, for it is not by ourselves that we shall find our comfort, but only in the lap of Jerusalem, our Holy Mother, the Church.
One more thing; it is not by accident that Jerusalem is understood as a city. Psalm 122 sings: “Jerusalem is built as a city.” While our salvation is to be gained through the Church, we are also required to go out and conquer the city – or the state – for Christ. Too often, too many of us have abandoned our obligation to Christianize the city and the state. We restrict our Christianity solely to our coming to church once a week, forgetting the obligation to spread the love of Christ in the world outside the doors of the church.
My dear brothers and sisters, there is a need for Catholics to step up and fulfill the vocations that Our Lord has entrusted to each and every one of us. Instead of chasing wealth, or the security of our children alone – and I must stress that in themselves these are noble goals in life – we also need to invest our energies in Christianising society and state, not abandoning them. In other words, there is a need for more Catholics to look for posts in Government services, in the police, in the postal service, in the banking sector, in the civil services, in the armed forces and bring the Gospel to these institutions through the way we work in them. For too long, Catholics in Goa – and God knows elsewhere too – have ignored exercising their vocation in these areas in favour of personal growth alone.
My dear brothers and sisters, the Gospel today contains a warning for those towns who do not welcome the seventy-two disciples. Our Lord warns “it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town.” Just as with the town that refuses the preaching of the Kingdom, so too will it be for those of the baptized who have refused to preach, even when knowing that the “"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.”
May Our Lord grant us the grace to realise our vocations.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the anticipated Sunday mass on 6 July 2025 at the Sé Catedral, Old Goa.)
(Image reference: Saint John the Baptist Preaching (detail), Mattia Preti (Il Cavaliere Calabrese), ca. 1665, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.)
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