Dominica XIV per Annum C6 July 2025 Every year in late spring and early summer there are a number of events having to do with the priesthood.  There are ordinations and anniversaries and many priests are beginning new assignments.  We are familiar with pointing to the Last Supper as the place where the Lord established the priesthood and the Holy Eucharist.  However, today’s Gospel passage is an important and unique passage that shows how Jesus appointed, not only the Apostles, but also other ministers with his authority. The Gospel passage helps us see a priestly order, an expanding rank of ministers, that is established with sacred authority from the Lord in order to assist the apostles as coworkers and companions.  The apostles need assistants and so, here, a much larger group than the Twelve is chosen to form a rank second to the apostles.  The Lord is forming a priestly hierarchy for his Church.  Today, we use the terms “presbyters” or “priests” for this secondary rank.  That’s not surprising given that this passage has strong allusions to the passages in Exodus 24 and Numbers 11 when Moses chose 70 priestly elders at the time of the Exodus to help him with his overwhelming mission by ministering to the twelve tribes of Israel (cf. Ex. 24:1; Num. 11:16ff). We should note that these 72 (from the Gospel) do not simply volunteer.  Still less, they do not choose themselves.  They don’t give themselves the mission and they don’t simply present themselves as having credentials to minister with the Lord’s authority.  No, they are chosen, and they are chosen by the Lord who sends them out to prepare the way for his work.  They are to have a total dedication and to be free of distraction to minister in the name of the Lord.  We see this from the instruction that they are to carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals, and that they are to greet no one along the way.  They are to have a radical focus in proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is at hand.  Finally, in a verse that is unfortunately left out of both the shorter and the longer versions of this passage, we see the full extent of the authority the Lord shares with the 72, when the Lord says this about his chosen ministers: “Whoever listens to you listens to me.  Whoever rejects you rejects me.  And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me” (Lk. 10:16).   This is a strong declaration of apostolic authority.  And it also demonstrates the importance of being united to the one Church the Lord established.  I say this because the authority is given by the Lord.  It is not claimed for oneself by someone who decides to be a minister, and still less by someone who simply starts his own “church” or community.  Now, that is a challenging notion in our modern age where we are so accustomed to religion and church being like a commodity that one shops for and picks the version one likes, with options on every street corner.  To minister with real apostolic authority comes from the Lord and operates within his Church.And having said all this about the divine authority the Lord bestows on his ministers, believe it or not, the Lord chooses real men, “average joe’s” we might say, to be sent out as his priests and to assist the work of the bishops who are the successors of the apostles.  This is the part of the passage I want to focus on this weekend.  The Lord instructs: “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Lk. 10:2).  My friends, we must do this.  We must pray to the Lord to send us the priestly workers we need.  And when I say we must pray for this, I mean we must speak to the Lord fervently and frequently.  We must also speak encouraging words to young men in our midst so that they have opportunities to hear the call.  This praying and this encouraging needs to happen, too, within families.  And so, I want to suggest in a particular way that parents, and especially fathers, be bold in speaking to sons about a reverence for the priesthood and a healthy pride you would have were a son to pursue a calling to the priesthood.I am convinced that the Lord is calling young men, and even more young men from our parish.  I am also convinced that our age suffers from so much noise and distraction that obstacles make it easy for young men to dismiss the possibility that the Lord could be calling them to the priesthood.  It is rarely the perfect candidate who ends up making a good seminarian.  We need to avoid the tendency of expecting already well-polished priestly qualities when we look upon a grade school boy or a teenage and college-aged young man in your family and in the parish.  No, we are looking for simple qualities of prayerfulness, participation in parish life, and dedication to service and to the faith.  These can be the precursors to the calling.  The rest can be formed and polished in seminary and in ministry.I think it needs to be said that we should also pray directly that the Lord’s strength removes obstacles from the hearts and minds of our boys and young men, obstacles that may cause them to quickly dismiss the idea of the priesthood as if it can’t be them or, as if they don’t have what it takes to be a future priest.  I suspect these kinds of obstacles frequently get in the way of a priestly vocation.  I think it is fair to say that if a boy or young man immediately dismisses the idea of the priesthood as something impossible for him, then he likely is not paying attention and is too easily dismissing what the Lord can do in him if the Lord is calling.  The rest of us also need obstacles removed from our hearts and minds.  We adults in the parish need to remember that we are looking for small signs, not already formed priests in the young men around us.  The ordinary, average joe shouldn’t be dismissed from our radar, and our prayer and invitation.  It could be your son.  It could be the boy who engages in some school pranks that we would probably call “bullying”.  It could be the boy who is terrible in the outfield, but better at shortstop.  It could be the guy who gets kicked out of a state park along with his Boy Scout troop on a campout.  It could be the guy who practices World Wrestling Federation moves on his younger brother in the living room.  It could be the young man who has some rather typical struggles with virtue.  It could be the guy who makes some bad choices before legal drinking age.  It could be the guy who takes your daughter to the prom.  It could be the guy who fails his first theology exam in seminary.  Are you catching on yet that all these “could bes” are real examples from my life?!  We clean up nicely, don’t we?!  And along with all that, all these unlikely examples, it could be the boy who also serves Mass.  It could be the guy who also sings in the choir, or prays in the chapel, or even who just sits in the pew nearby.  Yes, it could be your son, your brother, your nephew, your grandson, your friend, the guy in the pew around you.The obstacles aren’t important to the Lord and are weak compared to what his grace and power can do in the people he chooses and calls.  Our job is to pray, and to invite, and to listen, and to be open to what the Lord wants to do in us and in those possible candidates he calls to the priesthood.  The priesthood is a rewarding life and a challenging life and a life full of meaning that impacts the world because it impacts souls and leads them to God and His Kingdom.  Pray to the master of the harvest that we produce from our families and our parish the future priests whom the Lord will send ahead of himself to prepare his way!

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