By Fr. Brian Wirth
Director of Catholic Rural Life
In my last column, I wrote about the providential acts which happen during harvest and how every act highlights the truth that the “whole is more than the sum of the parts,” that each act small and large produces the true and beautiful good of the harvest.
One particular act I mentioned was providing harvest meals for farmers. In fact, the other day I had a parishioner come up to me and thank me personally for mentioning these meals as an essential and charitable work. He and I reminisced over the memories of the delicious food our families prepared while family and friends commune together despite the demands of field work.
This conversation led me to consider the Gospel account Luke 8:1-3. This account is unique, as it is one of the few times in which there is no recorded narrative. Instead, Luke offers a description of Jesus’ entourage of disciples as He journeys while preaching during his public ministry.
Certainly, it is a reasonable question to ask: What does a description of this group of characters journeying with Jesus offer us?
Luke identifies three types of persons Jesus is with: the Apostles, those who have been cured by Jesus, and those who provided for the group and the crowds. This image provides a view of the first parish family and like our families, an early domestic Church.
Personally, I love when farm families provide photos of the prepared dinner and photos of the family sitting in the field surrounded by farm machinery and autumn sky.
In a world where it is becoming rare to take the time to intentionally sit down together for dinner without the constant distractions, screens, and our demanding schedules, like the group traveling with Jesus, they daily come to Him and their domestic church family, daily offering their loving provisions of physical and spiritual goods.
As busy as life gets, to intentionally make time for the primary meal of the day is a powerful image and equally a good reminder for us that if families during harvest can sit down together for a meal, then we can, too, despite our busy schedules. We can gather for regular family meals wherever life finds us and above all at Sunday Mass weekly for the Eternal Banquet. In view of the Old/New Testament and the sacred liturgy, meals are very significant and one of the highest activities of the day for the family. Moreover, sharing a meal is a universal sign of communion.
During November, we prayerfully recall All Saints and All Souls. Equally, in the Apostles Creed, we profess belief in the “communion of saints,” the men and women disciples who accompanied Jesus during their earthly journey while offering many works of charity.
In Heaven, this countless group adores God in eternal glory, and particularly the Good Shepherd and Lamb who was slain for our salvation.
On earth, during the pilgrim journey of our Christian lives, while we are called to justly pause for worship each week, we likewise have many practical matters to attend to, especially during harvest. Nevertheless, while traveling this journey as a pilgrim Church, we can certainly enjoy “the better part” like Mary Magdalene, while still lovingly attending to the various labors of daily life, like Martha.
Considering these labors by the work of human hands, farmers, ranchers, and their families not only sacrificially labor in order to feed their families and the world, they provide us and the Church alike the precious gifts of the soil in order to sacramentally confer upon altars throughout the world the same Good Shepherd and Lamb adored by all the Saints in Heaven, all the souls in Purgatory, and all of us who make up the pilgrim Church.
Most powerfully, our farming families and domestic parish communities which comprise our diocese are thus sacrificially connected physically and spiritually via agricultural/rural vocations, to the Good Shepherd and to the Paschal Lamb.
From the beginning, God has blessed us with food and water to nourish and refresh our laboring bodies and spirits.
Thus, may we never forget the goodness of His bounty, our families, and the physical/spiritual significance of the communal meal which so wonderfully provides us as apostolic witnesses, as those who have been healed by Christ, and as those who spread this surplus banquet of grace to our domestic Church and the crowds of the world.
By our labor and sacrificial witness of our lives, may we, united with Christ provide food, food for the journey.
