Sometimes, committed Christians find themselves living amongst a population for whom God is not an active part of their lives, people who are more concerned about their earthly existence than in matters of faith. We may feel that way here in modern American as the secular values seem to be permeating our society and as many Americans see themselves as not affiliated with any organized religion. Even for us in modern world, when Jesus states “the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few,” those words may resonate with us.
For the early Christians who lived in small communities with pagan religions and superstitions all around them, there probably seemed to be few laborers indeed. The Church must have seemed to them to be a tiny mustard seed that would never grow into a large plant. But as Christianity spread throughout the world, the laborers in the early Church did not work in vain. In the Diocese of Jackson, the parishes we have today are a fruit of those families and priests who brought the Catholic faith to Mississippi and who built a Church here that has an influence far beyond our small numbers. The past two weeks, I was on mission appeals in Cumberland, Rhode Island and in Los Angeles, California, sharing stories about our Diocese and what it is like to be Catholic in the Bible Belt of the South. Even as a missionary Diocese here in Jackson, even as we receive help and support from others, it is important for us to reach out to others as well even beyond the boundaries of our Diocese.
Among those who call themselves Christians, how many of them could be deemed active laborers in God’s vineyard? The harvest is still great and there is still so much work to be done. There are 5 parishes in Madison county, 2 in Rankin county, and 8 in Hinds county. Yet, with all those parishes, just two are helping the Carmelite sisters with their yard work and with the upkeep of their grounds. We recently got a call at the chancery office, telling us that the other parish that is helping, St Joseph in Glukstadt, will not be able to help out much longer because their Knights of Columbus members who are doing the work are getting older and many are not in good health. In all of those parishes in the surrounding counties, it is hard for me to believe that none of the Knights groups or youth groups or parishioners are willing to help the Carmelites sisters in this endeavor. We might wonder where the laborers are who are willing to work in the Lord’s vineyard.
In the mind of Jesus and in the minds of the New Testament evangelists, everyone who called himself a disciples of Christ in the early Church was a worker for the vineyard. They did not see it as a select few. We are thankful that we have a lot of people in our parish community willing to contribute in so many ways. I look at the many people who dedicated so much time and hard work to putting on Vacation Bible School this year when parishes much bigger than us and with way more families did not have VBS at all because they could not get volunteers.
This brings us to the the Jubilee year of hope that we have been celebrating in 2025. We laborers in the vineyard are to be messengers of hope to the world in our words and actions. Not nebulous words ambiguous actions, but very intentional direct words and actions. How are we messengers of hope? How are we being formed as missionary disciples and evangelizers, and how are we bringing the message of the Gospel to the world after being formed? We indeed do a lot as a parish. But there is always more for us to do. There is always more we can do to get more people in our parish involved.
As I already mentioned the Carmelite sisters, they are having a novena of masses starting on July 7 to celebrate their feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Every year, they ask the priests, deacons, and parishes in the area to participate in this celebration with them. The date assigned to Holy Savior is July 15. I want to invite our parish as a whole to come with us for that Mass. Being in solidarity with other Catholics in the area is incredibly important. There are many different ways God calls us to work in his vineyard.
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