19th Sunday Year A - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2005

At this time of year, for two weekends, right around Australia, Catholic communities like your own are praying for more priests and nuns, asking God to urge more people to step forward and take on the ministry of priesthood and religious life. My being here this weekend may seem a good illustration of the need. There is no one around at the moment for the bishop to send here, unless he were to move someone from where he is now. You would be set up, but another parish would be left without a priest. You might even consider yourselves a bit like in today’s Gospel: you’re facing straight into a head wind, the sea is rough. Frankly the whole scene is scary. And if your own plight looks like being resolved after Christmas, the diocese as a whole seems to be going nowhere. It’s wild and dark out there, and daybreak seems a long way off. So, let’s pray – scream out to God!

It’s interesting, though! Nowhere in the Gospels, indeed in the whole New Testament, is there ever a suggestion that I am aware of that we should pray for more priests. There is that passage where Jesus says: The harvest is ripe but the labourers are few. So ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest. But Jesus was not talking about priests. That is about you. You are the ones called to bring in the harvest. You, the laity, are the ones present and active in the world at large, charged to shape it according to the mind and the heart of God.

I don’t know about yourselves, but I see that as by far the greatest priority at the moment. We need a Church on its toes, alert and responsive, eager to make known and practical Jesus’ plan for the world as the Kingdom of God. One catch is that, like Peter, we find the force of the wind frightening and disheartening. Even the Church as we know it seems to be creaking at the seams! People are dropping out like flies. We seem to have lost a whole generation (or, more accurately, whole generations). They aren’t so much hostile, just not interested! What’s the answer?

Well, we can’t make choices for others. We can wish others were different, but we can directly influence only ourselves. So, what about ourselves? Are we all vibrant followers of Jesus, casting fire on the earth, spreading his word of  compassion, mutual respect, non-violence, love, even (perhaps especially) of enemies? We are living at a time when so many are getting carried away by intolerance, military solutions to terrorism, survival of the fittest in an economic and social system where the poor get ground down even further, and in a world where millions die unnecessarily of hunger  each year.

I wonder if we would have more people wanting to be priests and religious if our local Catholic communities gave the impression that they were passionately committed to making our world a better place for all, where we all passionately believed in a God who is Father of all, and who asks us to see each other as members of the family, brothers and sisters of each other, realistically responsive to each one’s needs. Perhaps the seeds of vocations need a truly fertile soil.

I even wonder at times whether God is already calling enough people to be priests and nuns, but we are prepared to consider only the ones who are unmarried, and male, are professionally-educated and available for fulltime ministry.

It is a complex issue. Let’s pray by all means; let’s pray tirelessly. But let our prayer be a listening, discerning prayer. The prospects facing us may seem as scary as ghosts. But it could be that Jesus is out there in the dark - of all things, striding over the waves - and we don’t recognise him! Does it have to be Peter alone who checks him out? Let’s make of ourselves a vibrant Church and see what happens.