Jesus, of course, is a radical.  A “radical” is one who goes to the “radix” or root of the issue.  The root problem was that these Pharisees majored in the minors.  They loved to strain out gnats and swallow camels.  They missed the forest for the trees, going to great lengths to observe the letter of the law while totally missing its spirit.

So Jesus fires a broadside.  Splicing together two passages from the Torah, He sinks them.  “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind” (Deuteronomy 6:5).  “This is the greatest and first commandment.  The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Leviticus 19:18).

This sinks them for a couple of reasons.  First it brilliantly sums up the entire law because every single precept is an expression of these two commandments.  Read the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) and you’ll see that the first three are about loving God and the other seven are about loving your neighbor.  If you read every line of the Bible, you’d be able to put each command in column A (love God) or column B (love your neighbor).  So these two commandments are indeed the root of them all.

But the other reason His answer sinks them is that these two root commandments are precisely the ones the Pharisees keep breaking.  Observance of the law for them is not an act of divine worship but rather of self-promotion.  Rather than their observance of the law leading to love of neighbor, it leads to scorn of neighbors who fail to live up to their standards (see how they treat the blind man in John 9:24-34).  Note what Paul, the converted Pharisee, says: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1).  Paul knew this from experience — he spent years as a gong.  On the positive side, St. Augustine says “love and do what you will.”

Yet Jesus did not say just to love.  He said we must love the Lord with our WHOLE heart and soul and with ALL our mind and strength.  I made a discernment retreat at the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani when, at age 21, I felt torn between a desire for religious life and marriage.  As I walked into the retreat house, I shuddered to see this phrase inscribed in the stone over the entryway: “God Alone.”

Does wholehearted love of God leave no room in your heart for a spouse or children?

If that were the case, there would be no second great commandment in this story.  In fact Jesus says the second commandment is like the first.  That’s because the kind of wholehearted love Jesus is talking about is charity (agape), which means loving God for His own sake and all others for His sake, and doing so not by human strength, but with the divine love that is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).  When we love others with charity, we love God through them.  Our every loving act towards them becomes an expression of our love for God.

So at bottom, the two great commandments are just two sides of the same coin.  Jesus says to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and render to God what is God’s.  The two-sided coin of charity is the only legal tender we can use to pay the obligation that’s even more important than taxes — the one owed to the Creator.

So the Pharisees decided to put Jesus on the spot in front of the crowd.  They asked Him a question bound to get Him into trouble one way or the other.  “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor or not?”

First of all, Jesus teaches us how to deal with a bogus theological question.  He unmasks it for what it is, an effort to trip Him up rather than an inquiry proceeding from a sincere desire to know the truth.  And then, rather than letting Himself be controlled and put on the spot, He takes charge of the conversation and puts the Pharisees on the spot.  He answers a question with a question.  “Whose head is on that coin that you have in your pocket, the coin that you are using to pay for the temporal necessities of life?”  “Caesar’s.”  Next Jesus says something that makes them think, much as He did with the men eager to stone the woman caught in adultery (John 8).  “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar, but give to God what is God’s” (Mat 22:15-21).

Jesus wins the battle.  He transforms an attempt to make Him look bad into a teaching moment recorded for all time, providing all peoples and ages with some very important food for thought

Government is a fact of life.  Rulers, laws, police, taxes.  What should a worshipper of God make of it?

One thing Jesus points out to the Pharisees is that they participate in this societal infrastructure.  They don’t live on a deserted island but are dependent upon the imperial system for everything from the food in the marketplace to protection from thieves.  One rural community in the US recently celebrated their independence after seceding from the nearby township and its taxes.  A few days later, they were unpleasantly surprised when the town trash trucks failed to show up.

Jesus says we can’t have it both ways — if we benefit from secular society, we need to support the infrastructure of society.  This can take the form of taxes, military service, jury duty, and informed, conscientious voting.

On the other hand, Jesus says that we need to give to God what is God’s.  This is the real punch line of the story.  For God has given us everything.  In fact, it is He who raises up kings and nations and through them provides for us.  The Lord used the Babylonians to punish the stubborn disobedience of the kingdom of Judah.  But when the time of exile was completed, God used the pagan Persian king, Cyrus, to break the stranglehold of Babylon and allow the Chosen People to return home.  The prophet Isaiah even calls this unbeliever the messiah or anointed one (Is 45:1-6)!

But there are also times when political rulers overstep their authority.  Sometimes, they demand to be worshiped, as Caesar did.  Other times they attack human dignity, violating natural law which demands that innocent human life be respected and that liberty be protected.  These are times when Christians have a duty boldly to insist that while Caesar is owed his due, we won’t stand by and silently watch him step on God’s toes.

It would have never occurred to me to spend my Saturday nights at a Catholic conference or retreat.  True, no matter how late I was out, I’d never miss Sunday Mass.  But that’s not because it was the source and summit of my life.  It was because I didn’t want to go to hell.  Being roasted over an open fire for all eternity definitely did not appeal to me.  But neither did wasting my Saturday night in a Church event that was not strictly required by divine law.

Why is this?  Because I craved fun, joy, adventure and fulfilment.  And Church was the last place I expected to find any of these things.  Heaven was described as “eternal rest.” Nothing could have sounded more boring.

But in the gospel of Matthew (22:1-14), the kingdom of God is not described in terms of an endless ceremony or angels sitting on clouds playing harps.  It is painted in the colors of a wedding feast — a boisterous, energizing celebration with delectable food, choice wine, dancing, laughter, and fellowship.  But not just any wedding feast.  This party will be fit for a king since the bridegroom is a prince.  Obviously, the royal Host will spare no expense and it will be truly a gala affair.

But when the King’s representatives issue personal invitations to this party of the century, there are few takers.  Perhaps part of it is the fault of the messengers.  Maybe their blank faces and monotone voices confirmed the worst suspicions of the invited guests-that anything put on by the King will be a crashing bore.

But where did this suspicion come from in the first place?  Isaiah speaks of a veil that covers all peoples, a web that is woven over all nations (Isaiah 25:6-10).  It is a web of deceit that has been woven not by a spider, but by the serpent that first deceived Eve.  It is an immense propaganda campaign that is subtly woven into the messages of movies, TV shows, and print advertizing.  It shows up in teachers’ lesson plans and athletes’ locker room conversations.  The message is simple — “do what God says and you’ll have no life.  His reign is at worst about oppression, at best endless boredom.  Either reject Him or, if you really have to believe in Him, just don’t waste too much time and energy on religion.  Give the obligatory ‘nod to God’ and go out and get a life.”

That’s why rock concerts and football games have sellout crowds but we often have to pull teeth to fill a church for a parish mission.  That’s why the king in the parable had a hard time filling his banquet hall.

Be honest.  Do you see the pursuit of the Kingdom as a joyful romp, or as a tiresome chore?  Do you do the minimum, or grab for all the spiritual gusto you can out of your Christian life?  Do you make excuses that you’re too tired or too busy when opportunities arise to grow spiritually, or do you make the Kingdom top priority?

The Catholic tradition speaks of “Seven Deadly Sins.”  One of the sneakiest and deadliest is often overlooked, which is exactly why it is sneaky and deadly.  It is called “sloth” or spiritual laziness.  The symptoms?  The sloth perceives the kingdom of God to be boring and so can find no energy to pursue it.  Everything else — work, kids’ soccer games, super-bowl parties, shopping — takes precedence so that the sloth never gets around to seeking God.

A wise monk once told me that the greatest sin of our sex-saturated, hyperactive culture was not lust but ironically that spiritual laziness called sloth.  I think he was on to something.

But the roots of the papacy actually go back to Jerusalem and the messiah-kings who ruled there.

Like most heads of state, David and his descendants, the anointed kings of Judah, realized that they could not govern alone.  The most important officer assisting the king was something akin to a prime minister.  He was called “the Master of the Palace.”  In Isaiah 22, this Sunday’s first reading, we see God tell an unworthy Master of the Palace, Shebna, that he will be replaced by Eliakim, who will do things correctly.  Here’s what we learn from this passage — the Master of the Palace wears special robes of honor indicating his special authority.  He is to be a “father” to everyone in the Kingdom.  The symbol of his authority is a key, for he has the power to open doors for people and to close doors as well.  Particularly, he controls access to the king himself.  He is someone who you can hang a lot of weight upon, like a peg in a sure spot.

When Jesus began His public ministry, He did not just come right out and proclaim that He was the long-awaited messiah.  At Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:13-20), He asked His disciples what the crowd was saying about Him.  They quickly volunteered various opinions they’d heard.  But then the Lord asked a more pointed question.  “Who do you say that I am?”  Perhaps an awkward moment of silence followed.  Then one of them blurted out: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God!”  Notice I did not say that it was Peter who proclaimed this.  For he was not yet called Peter.  And that’s the point.  Nowhere else in the Gospels does Jesus change anyone’s name.  In the Old Testament, when God changed someone’s name, it indicated that the person was to play a unique role in salvation history — Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, and so on.  Plus, the new God-given name itself provides a clue to the special role the person will play.  Abraham means father of many nations, for example.

Peter means, of course, rock.  Remember Eliakim, the reliable peg that could bear much weight?  A rock is something stable you can stand on, even build on.  And the key Jesus is talking about?  Jesus is making plain that as Founder of the new Israel, He is choosing His prime minister.  In fact He notes that it is His Father who made the selection.  For it is by virtue of divine revelation that the fisherman knows what no man on his own could know — that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One of God.

One of the most difficult things to swallow about Catholic teaching is the dogma of papal infallibility.  But this passage provides the foundation of this doctrine.  Peter, and his successors, are given a charism of truth whereby, when push comes to shove, they are empowered by the Holy Spirit to identify the truth about Jesus.  Otherwise, the truth would be up for grabs.  If that was the case, the jaws of death would in fact prevail over the Church.  Jesus, in making Simon “Peter,” made sure they wouldn’t.  And despite 2000 years of persecution from without and enemies from within, they haven’t.

So why is Rome the center of the Catholic Church?  Because Peter died there.  And why the fancy robes and the title “Holy Father”?  Because Eliakim wore robes of honor and was a “father” to the people.

So yes, the Papacy is quintessentially Catholic, but that’s because it is thoroughly biblical.

Did Jesus too regard these people with disdain?  At first glance it appears so.  She cries out, “Lord, son of David, have pity on me!” and makes him aware that her daughter is troubled by a demon.  He ignores her at first.  Then he rebuffs her.  “My mission is only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  She is undaunted and, as if she did not hear him, insistently cries out: “Help me Lord!”

Then comes what many would take as a put down.  Jesus says: “It is not right to take the food of sons and daughters and throw it to the dogs.”  She could simply have taken offense and walked off in a huff.

But instead she persevered, responding with humility and wit: “even the dogs eat the leavings that fall from their master’s table.”

Jesus could no longer resist: “Woman, you have great faith, your wish will come to pass.”  And immediately, her daughter was delivered from the power of evil.

Many people think faith is “belief that” . . .   Belief that God exists, or that Jesus is the Messiah.  This woman certainly has this kind of belief.  Though she is not a Jew, she calls Jesus “Son of David,” which means she believes that he is the anointed king of Israel foretold by the prophets.

Yet faith is more than “belief that.”  It is belief in.  To believe in someone is to trust them, to entrust something of value to them, even to entrust one’s very self to them.  Here, the woman entrusts the destiny of her daughter to the man who stands before her.  And desire for her daughter’s salvation propels her to pursue him, to seek him tirelessly until she obtains what she believes he can provide.

Jesus often rebukes his disciples for having little faith.  Their faith is little because it cowers before every obstacle.  This woman’s faith is great because it disregards every obstacle.  He is the King of the Jews.  She is a Gentile.  She asks; he is silent.  She asks two more times, he says no.  She doesn’t care.  She just keeps on coming.

Notice that though she is insistent, she is nonetheless humble.  She does not dispute Jesus’ “preferential option for the Jews.”  She does not arrogantly demand to be served first.  She’ll settle for leftovers.

Jesus had come first for the people of Israel, then for the whole world.  He was only in phase one of his mission.  The time of the Gentiles had not yet come.  But the great faith of this woman appears to have induced him to move forward the timetable.  It reminds me of another woman of faith who moved forward Jesus’ timetable when the wedding guests had no more wine (John 2).  His first response appeared to be a no, but her determined perseverance turned it into a yes that launched his public ministry.

There is a place in the gospels where Jesus says that faith can move mountains.  Here we see that faith can move something even more formidable than mountains — it can move God himself!

I once heard a homilist give what he said was the real meaning of the story: the people in the crowd took out food they were hiding under their cloaks and shared it.  Jesus’ preaching inspired the melting of selfishness, and this was the true miracle according to this preacher.

My teens would call such preaching hopelessly lame!

This was a needy crowd.  They could not feed themselves or each other.  They could not heal themselves or each other.  Jesus was moved with pity and was ready to provide them all that they needed.  The apostles wanted to send them away to fend for themselves.

And this hits upon the grain of truth contained in the lame interpretation we’ve just mentioned.  Though this story is about truly supernatural, miraculous action, it is not about God creating something out of nothing.  He says to the apostles “you give them something to eat yourselves.”  He had to be joking, they must have thought to themselves.  They had nothing, or almost nothing.  Just five loaves and two fish — scarcely enough to serve as an appetizer for themselves, never mind the crowd.  But the apostles sheepishly complied when Jesus ordered that they surrender their scanty food supply.  He blessed this meager offering and the miracle happened.  It was not only enough, but after thousands had eaten their fill, there was more left over than what they’d started with.

It never ceases to amaze me how much energy we put into making excuses.  “I don’t even earn enough to feed my own family; how can I be expected to give?”  “I haven’t studied the faith enough to be a religious education teacher.”  “I trip over my words when I try to explain my faith — I’ll just evangelize through good example.”

Our financial resources, talents, and holiness are clearly inadequate to meet the needs of a hungry and confused world.  But what else is new?  This gospel commands us to offer these resources anyway, trusting that He will multiply them.  Who could have guessed how God would multiply the loaves and fishes offered by an Albanian nun named Teresa when she walked into the slums of Calcutta to minister to those dying in the streets?  Imagine if she had said “No, Lord, this is beyond me.”  Imagine if Peter had not reconsidered after saying “Leave me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8).  Imagine if the apostles had saved the five loaves and fish for themselves instead of offering them to a crowd that wouldn’t have been satisfied with them anyway.

“But,” you may protest, “isn’t this miracle story about the Eucharist?”  Absolutely.  In the Eucharist we bring the very ordinary work of our hands, bread and wine, and join to this the offering of our very ordinary lives.  Through the invocation of the Spirit and the Word of God, this offering is transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ, the Bread of Life and the Cup of eternal salvation.  We offer Him the work of our hands and our broken humanity, and He transforms these things into perfect humanity and life-giving divinity.  And with this He not only feeds us but empowers us to feed the whole world.

This transformation, this multiplication is a supernatural marvel that is the source of other marvels.  In fact, if we were to unpack just a fraction more of the miraculous power contained in the Eucharist, we, the Church and the world would be forever different.

And that’s why Pope John Paul II proclaimed a Year of the Eucharist that proved to be the climax of his pontificate — that in meditating more on this astounding gift, we would be prompted to quit holding back.  He has given all and asks for all in return, not so He can take it away, but rather so that He can multiply it.

Dreaming about such things is natural; expecting such things is dangerous.  Unrealistic expectations lead to discouragement, despair, even cynicism.  That would be bad enough.  But the expectation that the Church is only for the holy has led people to embark on some very misguided projects throughout history.

Consider those who burned witches and heretics to cleanse the church of evil.  Or the Puritans who were so appalled by ecclesiastical corruption that they planted a purified Church of the saints in a new land, legislating piety and subjecting the lapsed to public humiliation.

Jesus’ own example should have prevented these errors.  First of all, Jesus Himself was criticized by the Pharisees for dining with the unclean.  He accepted tax collectors and sinners as disciples.  He knew the flaws in Peter, Judas, and the others, but He chose them anyway.  And just in case His own actions weren’t enough to get His point across, He told the parable of the wheat and the weeds (Mat 13:24ff).

All this is not to say that Jesus was soft on sin.  He commanded the adulteress to go and sin no more and sharply rebuked the apostles numerous times for their pitiful lack of faith.  But He did not dismiss them after their numerous blunders.  He had come for the sick, not the healthy.  His church was to be a hospital for sinners, not a club just for saints.  Of course a hospital exists not to keep people sick, but get them well.  If patients want to be admitted, they must be willing to accept treatment, occasionally even severe treatment.  Harsh medicines must be used to fight deadly diseases such as cancer.  Other times cancerous organs even need to be cut out.  Electric shock therapy has even been employed to bring people out of depression.

This brings up an objection that has caused heated debate in recent years.  If the Church is meant to be inclusive as the parable of the wheat and tares suggests, then why do we still have the penalty of excommunication on the books?  Why do some clamor that Catholic politicians who vote for abortion rights should be denied holy communion?  Isn’t this just a mean-spirited sort of Puritanism?

Not in the least.  Withholding communion is done for two reasons.  One is that the reception of Holy Communion means not only that one wants personally to receive the eucharistic body of Christ, but that one is in full, visible communion with the ecclesial body of Christ, which is the Church, fully accepting its teaching and submitting to the authority of its pastors.  To receive communion while living in a state of grave sin or brazen dissent from church teaching causes tremendous confusion.  It could mislead observers into concluding that the sin or error in question is not so serious after all and induce them to also indulge in it.  Secondly, it could also lead the communicant to the same conclusion — that his or her actions or opinions really are acceptable and fall within the boundaries of what is spiritually healthy.

Excommunication is not snooty Puritanism.  When employed, it is intended as a form of shock therapy.  The patient is delusional and needs to be woken up to reality.  If we don’t act to bring the patient back to his senses, he will likely do himself in and perhaps even take others with him.

When to employ such therapy is a matter for Pope and bishops to decide.  Our responsibility is not to worry about how to separate the evil tares from the wheat of the church, but how to uproot the seeds of wickedness from the field of our own hearts.  That task is big enough!

But selfishness is nothing new.  Ever since Eve bit into the apple, human beings have made the choice to dethrone God and put in His place the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I.

But Jesus commands us to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”  Doesn’t this imply that love of self is OK, even required?

Absolutely.  God placed in us a drive towards self-preservation.  He made beneficial activities, like eating, pleasurable.  And He made destructive activities painful.

But He also gave us intellect and will so that we are not driven simply by instinct, as are the animals.  So the ancient enemy of humanity does his best to deceive our intellect into thinking that what is destructive is actually good for us.  And he entices us to use our will to choose these destructive things contrary to God’s commandments.  The end justifies the means, he argues, and so if we have to trample over others and defy God to get what we want, so be it.

This is the kind of self-love that Jesus condemns (Matthew 10:37-42).  It leads to ruin, confusion, and emptiness.  There is no way to tame this or to fit religion into it.  The only solution is to kill it.  In baptism, this old egocentric self is crucified and buried with Christ (Romans 6:11). The man who wrote this line, Saul of Tarsus, knew what he was talking about.  The about-face required of him was radical, turning him from persecutor to persecuted, agent of hatred to apostle of love. There can only be one Lord — Jesus or me.

Accepting Jesus means allowing Him to be boss, allowing Him to call the shots and direct my steps.  Picking up the cross and following Him (Matthew 16:24-25) means accepting the Father’s will, even where it “crosses” my will, even when it leads to suffering.  This is the meaning of Jesus’ words to Peter “as a young man you fastened your belt and went about as you pleased, but when you are older, you will stretch out your hands and another will tie you fast and carry you off against your will” (John 21:18).

When Jesus had finished saying this, he looked at Peter and said “Follow me.”  A few years ago he said much the same thing to the new successor of Peter, Pope Benedict XVI.  Those pundits who spoke of his maneuvering to build support for his “candidacy” before and during the conclave made me laugh.  Cardinal Josef Ratzinger had tried to retire twice before the death of John Paul II!  Both times the Pope refused to accept his resignation.  When during the conclave he saw momentum began building for his election, he cried out to God begging to be spared.  The room where the newly elected Pope first dons the Papal vestments is called the “Room of Tears” for a reason.

As we celebrate the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, let us recall that before these saints were shepherds and apostles, they were sheep and disciples.  God was able to do great things in them and through them because they made a decision to surrender control of their lives and destiny to the Son of Man who is also the Son of God.

Jesus says “follow me” to each of us.  It may mean making a change of career.  It may mean breaking off a relationship that is leading us away from Christ.  Or it may just mean doing what we are already doing but for an entirely different reason . . . achieving great things not to draw attention to ourselves, but to glorify Christ . . . seeking an intimate relationship no longer to take but to give . . . working not for the weekend, but for the kingdom.

To call God “Father” does not mean to say, of course, that He is an old man with a white beard.  Only the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity wedded Himself to a male human nature in the womb of Mary.  The Father and the Holy Spirit are pure Spirit and transcend male and female, masculine and feminine (CCC 239).  This is no new insight brought to Christianity by the feminist movement.  It has always been taught that the word “Father,” applied to God, is used by way of analogy.  Analogies tell us something very true despite being imperfect.  Until recently, the father was recognized by Western society as origin, head and provider of the family.  To call the First Person of the Trinity “Father” means that He is the origin and transcendent authority of all and cares for the needs of all. 

But we all instinctively know that a father who does no more than bark orders and pay the bills is leaving something out.  We expect a dad to have an intimate, affectionate relationship with his children, to spend “quality time” with them.  To call God “Father” means, then, that He is near to us, intimately concerned with us, fond of us, even crazy about us.  He is not the distant, clockmaker God of Thomas Jefferson and the Deists.  This aloof God of the philosophers created the world to run by virtue of its own natural laws so that he could withdraw and occupy Himself with more interesting pursuits.

No, the God whom Jesus calls Father cares about us and knows us intimately.  “Every hair on your head is numbered” (Mat 10:30).  He loves us more than we love ourselves and knows us better than we know ourselves.

Now, this does not mean that He makes all things go smoothly for us.  He loves us so much that He made us in His image and likeness, which means He made us free.  And through the free choice of the first man, evil and death were invited into our world.  He does not shield us from all the troublesome consequences of this “original sin” which each of us, sadly, has ratified with our own personal sin.  But He sent us prophets, like Jeremiah, to wake us up and warn us of the horrible consequences of disobedience.  And finally He sent his Firstborn Son to be a new Adam, to pay the price of that disobedience and give the human race an undeserved new start.

The most horrible consequence of sin, eternal death (Gehenna), has been graciously removed for all who accept the free gift of salvation that comes by way of the cross of Christ.  But evil is still at large in the world, and evil brings trials and tribulations.  Our Father will not shelter us from these anymore than He sheltered Jeremiah (Jer 20:10-13) or Jesus.  A good father doesn’t protect his children forever from the harsh realities of life, but helps them as they progress through various stages of development to face the challenges and grow through the difficulties.  Scripture says that even Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered (Heb 5:8-9).  How much more do we need to learn and mature?  And some learning can only take place through suffering.

So, as a true Father, He loves us too much to take us out of the fray.  But there’s one thing we can be sure of — He’ll never leave us to fight our battles alone.

Now the fun begins.  “There must be some mistake,” I respond.  “The Catholic Church has had female and married priests from the very beginning.”

That is usually met with a blank, perplexed stare.

But really, it is true.  In Exodus 19:6 God promises to make the chosen people “a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”  The first letter of Peter 2:5-10 echoes this.  And to show how seriously the Catholic Church takes this, the sacrament of confirmation offers to all Catholics an anointing with the sacred chrism that is used to confer only one other sacrament — the ordination of bishops and priests.

This is not to blur the distinction between the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of all believers.

The concept of priesthood implies the notion of sacrifice.  And only the priest who receives the sacrament of holy orders is authorized and empowered to stand in the person of Christ in the Eucharistic sacrifice and repeat the words he uttered over the bread and wine the night before he died.  Only the ministerial priest consecrates bread and wine and transforms them into the body and blood of Christ.

So what sacrifice does the priesthood of the laity offer?  What do we lay “priests” consecrate?

St. Paul answers the first question in Romans 12:2: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship.”  As the Lord Jesus offered Himself totally for our sake, we are called to lay down our lives for Him and for one another.  On rare occasions, this may mean the “supreme sacrifice” of martyrdom.  But more commonly, it means the living sacrifice, the “white martyrdom,” of denying our own will to embrace His will, “offering up” in love the work we do and the trials we endure, as a sacrifice of praise of God and intercession for others in need.  Studying for exams, changing a soiled diaper, going to work to provide for our families — these are all activities that become opportunities for Christians to exercise their sacred priesthood.  In fact, during the Sunday Eucharist, as the bread and wine are carried up to the altar, we are called to consciously place ourselves and all sacrifices of the past week on the altar with the gifts to be united with Christ’s perfect sacrifice to the Father.

So what do we lay “priests” consecrate?  Vatican II gives us the answer to that question in its decree on the Apostolate of the Laity.  We are called to consecrate the secular, the earthly, the nitty-gritty realities of life to God.  When we give thanks over a meal, we consecrate it to God’s glory and sanctify it.  When we offer our work in sacrifice, and live out our Christian witness in the workplace, we consecrate our work and sanctify it.  We lay priests are to be God’s secret agents in every arena of life, in places where ministerial priests and religious may never go, elevating, purifying, sanctifying, blessing.

Without the pastoral care and sacramental ministry of ordained priests and bishops, we lay “priests” would never have the spiritual wherewithal to live out this challenging call.

So yes, by all means, praying for God to send laborers to the harvest entails praying for an increase of vocations to the ministerial priesthood and religious life.  And we need to put our children and teens in contact with holy priests and religious who are joyfully and fruitfully living out their vocations, so that it might be easier for the young to hear God calling should they have such a vocation.

But praying for laborers for the harvest also means to pray that more and more of those priests consecrated through baptism and confirmation would answer the awesome call that they’ve received to transform themselves and all creation through the sacrificial love of Christ poured into their hearts through the Holy Spirit.