Watermelon

"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;   
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest."

My Dad was a good man. He had two missions in life, the first was to take care of his family and the second was to tend his garden.  His garden was his pride and joy.  He grew beefsteak tomatoes the size of a clincher softball and his radishes were huge.  I love tomatoes, not so much the radishes. Every day during the summer he would come home from work and immediately go out to work in the garden.  One year, he had me and my two sisters plant some watermelon seeds in a patch of ground between the sidewalk and the neighbor's fence line, a space of about eight inches.  The three of us became gardeners for the rest of the summer.  We watered the little patch, made sure no weeds grew and carefully took care of the plants that would produce these wonderful watermelons.  It was getting close to the start of school. The parish carnivals had come and gone and still no watermelon.  We continued to tend the plants and one day, there they were, three watermelons had appeared where just that morning there had been only the promise of fruit in the future.  We were amazed.  Dad had us harvest the three melons, each just big enough for one child. Using a magic marker he placed our names on the melon and we carried our precious product to Mom who put them in the refrigerator to chill down.  The melons made a wonderful desert that day at dinner time.  

Our reading today is about the lack of workers tending the fields of our heavenly Father.  There was a time when a parish had three, four, or even five priests to take care of the local Catholic community.  I remember as a kid, going to Saturday confession and all four of the confessional boxes were in use. There was also a time when in a family if a boy or girl felt called to a Christian vocation, it was a matter of great pride for the family and they young people were encouraged to listen to the voice of the Lord.  

In contrast, I look at what happened to me when I announced that I felt a calling to the religious life.  My family let out a collective yawn and did not exactly encourage me.  Well, I went and tried religious life and as you know, after two years, I returned home.  I think back on those days, which were some of the richest and most joyous days of my life surpassed only by the day I married the lovely Mary my wife and partner in life. But, I wonder if I would have stayed had I received any encouragement from the home front?   This was in the 70's, a time when the Church was experiencing growing pains as we tried to unravel the wisdom that was Vatican II.  We still are working through that council.  

Today, some parishes are served by a single priest who divides his time among several parishes.  In parts of the United States deacons celebrate communion services on Sundays using communion consecrated by the priest that comes once a month.  People in these areas are dying without receiving the anointing of the sick or Viaticum.  We truly need more workers in the field. 

Some solutions are presented, for example, women priests is one thought.  The Church points out that both men and women have different jobs to do.  The role of the priest is reserved to the male of the species.  This is something that will not change.  We are told that we lack priests because of the rule of celibacy that they take on, that it is too hard for a man to live his life without the comfort of a woman to accompany him on the journey.  This is a discipline of the Church and it could be changed.  But, are the people in the pews ready to take on all it means to have a married clergy? A married clergy means that the priest will need to make a living wage so that he can take care of his family.  This would mean the weekly collections would have to go up so the parish could support a priest and his family.  The poor parishes would be at a disadvantage because they would not be able to afford to maintain a priest and his wife and a couple of children.  To be sure, there are already married priests in the Roman Catholic Church.  They have come over from Episcopal Churches, returning home to Rome.  They have been welcomed into the Church and have had their priesthood confirmed and they celebrate the Mass and the Sacraments as they enjoy the comfort of a family to accompany them.  

I do not know the answer to the lack of priests and religious in the Catholic world today. What I do know is that we have to encourage our young people to consider a religious vocation and we need to do it from an early age.  When I was growing up, there was no real talk in our home about the Church, we did not share family prayer and as a matter of fact, my father or mother did not go to church on Sunday, only us kids were sent to sit with our class at 9:15 AM mass. 

Jesus gives us the formula as to how to solve this crisis. He tells us to pray that the master of the harvest to send more workers out into the field, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  So, reserve just a little bit of your prayer time to pray for vocations.  Do you remember Mother Angelica on EWTN telling you to put her between your phone and electric bill, well when you pray put a prayer for our young people to answer the call of God between your prayers for Aunt Bertha and her bunions and Uncle Frank and his need for a job.  We need more priests, nuns, brothers, and deacons and we will get what we ask for and the harvest will be greater if we can encourage those with the call to listen to the voice of God as He calls them forth.