St Aloysius & The Sacred Heart Parish
St Aloysius & The Sacred Heart Parish
“The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few;
therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest”
On the one hand, God, like a sower, has generously gone out into the world, throughout history, and sowed in people’s hearts a desire for the infinite, for a fulfilled life and for salvation that sets us free. The harvest, then, is plentiful. The Kingdom of God grows like a seed in the ground, and the women and men of today, even when seemingly overwhelmed by so many other things, still yearn for a greater truth; they search for a fuller meaning for their lives, desire justice, and carry within themselves a longing for eternal life.
On the other hand, however, there are few labourers to go out into the field sown by the Lord; few who are able to distinguish, with the eyes of Jesus, the good grain that is ripe for harvesting (…).
To do this, we do not need too many theoretical ideas about pastoral plans. Instead, we need to pray to the Lord of the harvest. Priority must be given, then, to our relationship with the Lord and to cultivating our dialogue with him. In this way, he will make us his laborers and send us into the field of the world to bear witness to his Kingdom. (Pope Leo XIV, Angelus, 6 July 2025)
The Twelve
From - 'Seasons of the Word' (Fr. Denis McBride C.Ss.R.)
When Matthew writes his Gospel he displays no interest in the biographical details of the apostles. The same is true of the other evangelists. The twelve apostles, the first members of the Christian family, appear in the Gospels as little more than a list of names. Apart from Judas, the only four who stand out among the Twelve are the two sets of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John.
In the New Testament story of the early Church, Andrew disappears from the scene; James is martyred in the early 40s; John is identified as the beloved disciple in the Fourth Gospel. Peter is the only member of the Twelve about whom we have any significant knowledge.
Although each Gospel states that Jesus chose twelve apostles from among the larger group of disciples, we know little about them as individuals. There is even some variation in the four lists of their names. Perhaps the evangelists were deliberately avoiding what we would call “personality cults”. The apostles were chosen by Jesus to be his accredited witnesses. Their experience of Jesus who walked the roads of Palestine was unique in the history of the Church; but they were important as apostles in the measure that they pointed others to the person of Jesus. This might explain why, although they were revered in the early Church, there was no organised nostalgia about their time.
The Church moves on in the life of faith: each community of believers must give birth to its own apostles. The apostles of every age must be as self-effacing as the apostles of the first age: they must point others to the living Lord.
We are all called to holiness, we are all called to follow Jesus, we are all called to make Jesus known to all peoples. Like the chosen people of Israel we are counted a kingdom of priests, a consecrated nation. We cannot spend our time in nostalgia, looking back to the days when Jesus walked the roads of Palestine with the Twelve. We must minister to our own time, take responsibility for our own mission. This is a matter for all of us. As Saint John Henry Newman wrote:
He called us first in baptism; but afterwards also;whether we obey his voice or not, he graciously calls us still... Abraham was called from his home, Peter from his nets, Matthew from his office, Elisha from his farm, Nathanael from his retreat; we are all in course of calling, on and on, from one thing to another.The call takes us on and on, not back and back. It isa call to the future. It means that we refuse to be fixated by what has been. Our responsibility is today and tomorrow.
