The “Messiah Team”

October 18: Saturday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II

Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist:

2 Timothy 4:10-17; Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13, 17-18; Luke 10:1-9

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five).

The “Messiah Team”

“Your friends make known the glorious splendor of your Kingdom” (Responsorial).

The Messiah is a team: the body of Jesus with many members, each charged to act in a special way for the common good by using the “gift of the Spirit.”

Jesus sent seventy-two to announce the Good News as “evangelists” whose lifestyle—“no money bag, no sack, no sandals”—accredited them as “witnesses” (prophets). Their converts, to become disciples, needed “teachers.” To persevere and grow, they needed a community with “gifts of healing,” and various kinds of “helping ministries,” including “leadership” (1Corinthians, chapter 12). These are the “laborers” we “ask the master of the harvest” to activate in his Church. Unfortunately, though “the harvest is abundant,” Jesus said “the laborers are few.”

To remedy that, who needs to do what?

Most “vocation posters” are counterproductive. By only promoting priests and nuns, they reinforce the root of the problem, which is clericalism—the blindness that “overlooks the responsibility of the laity, grounded in their Baptism and Confirmation,” “neglects the formation they need to take on important responsibilities,” and “distances them from decision-making.” But “lay people are the immense majority of the people of God. The clergy are a minority ordained to serve them” (Joy of the Gospel 102).

So we need to focus on getting and letting the laity save the world.

How? It is spelled out in Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life…” A short, easy read.

PRAY: “Lord, send laborers; send me.”

PRACTICE: Check out www.immersedinchrist.org.