"The Harvest is abundant..."

07/05/22 Gospel Reflection

Matthew 9:32-38 USCCB Daily Readings

It’s important to understand for Bible readers when reading Sacred Scripture the human authors of the texts, guided by the Holy Spirit, as I have stressed over and over, do not view and do not write events like modern historians or think like modern witnesses. In my view, these writers probably saw the world much clearer than modern humanity by understanding the deep layers of archetypes and motifs interwoven in human history touched and moved by God.

The passage from Matthew today is like the Sunday gospel from Luke. I’d encourage everyone to compare the two passages. Of course, these two books are two-thirds of what scholars refer to as the Synoptic Gospels—the largely Greco-Roman biographical accounts of Jesus of Nazareth.

The passage from Sunday from Luke’s Gospel begins early in the passage with “He said to them, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”[1]

Matthew’s Gospel text ends with this passage, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; 38 so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”[2]

The use of this saying is very different for Matthew than it is for Luke. The important thing to note is to keep in mind the authorial audience of each writer. For example, Luke is writing to a largely Gentile audience, and so, Luke’s use of this passage focuses more on the everyday discipleship compared to Matthew’s more torah following audience. The striking difference is that Luke uses the passage as an introduction with the mission of the 72 disciples—the 72 (70) disciples only appear in the Gospel of Luke out of the four gospels.

There is debate among biblical scholars about the commissioning of the twelve which follows today’s gospel reading in Matthew compared to the commissioning of the 72 disciples in Luke along with the twelve, but what is important for us with these two passages is understanding the dynamic that exists in the Church today between the ministerial priesthood and the common priesthood. The Directory for Ministry and Life of Priests explains, “The ministerial and common priesthoods are ordered for one another and different only by degree. The ministerial priesthood is not superior to the common priesthood of all the baptized, but is different in degree by “by the service it is called to carry out for all the faithful so they may adhere to the mediation and Lordship of Christ rendered visible by the exercise of the ministerial priesthood.”[3]

So, what should the faithful make of this distinction made by the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke? Michael F. Patella writes “The seventy-two disciples, on the other hand, travel in pairs as they bring the good news to households and towns. They are told to cure the sick, but Jesus says nothing about exorcizing demons; yet, they also do so.”[4]

It is important to honor ministerial priesthood who stand in the person of Christ for the sacramental life of the Church, but as Cardinal Avery Dulles reminds us in Models of the Church, The notion of the Church as Herald is the responsibility of every baptized Christian to bring the good news of Jesus Christ and the salvation of sins to the world. Amen.

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[1] New American Bible, Revised Edition. (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), Lk 10:2.

[2] New American Bible, Revised Edition. (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011), Mt 9:37–38.

[3] The Directory for Ministry and Life of Priests, 6.

[4] Michael F. Patella, “The Gospel according to Luke,” in New Testament, ed. Daniel Durken, The New Collegeville Bible Commentary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 255.