Matthew 25: The Work of Jesus Christ Through His Apostles

Matthew 25:

The Work of Jesus Christ Through His Apostles

By Fr. Brian Mason

(from Mass on June 27)

This past week we had Matthew 25 Workcampers go out to different sites, sometimes to help people in their own homes or where senior citizens live and other kinds of service work. I was with a group on Thursday that went to an urban farm that grows 20,000 pounds of organic produce per year.

We went to a barn where they were growing squash, and we had to weed it. (I hate weeding.) We weeded to keep the squash plants healthy, to make the garden look good, but ultimately, because there are people who need fresh produce. We will never see the produce that was grown. We will never meet the people who will receive this. By weeding, though, and doing something that mundane, we are doing the work of Christ. We put Christ’s mission front and center in out lives.

Whenever we do something like that, we remember who we are as followers of Christ, who we are as people who carry out his mission, and who we are as people who make Christ present in the world—even when we don’t know who is going to benefit from the work we do. Each of us has the ability to do the work of Christ, some of it’s mundane or easy or hard. What Christ is asking us to do is to step out of our own little worlds—the worlds of our families, our concerns and our opinions—to recognize that there are other people who have need. He has asked us to be the people who help fulfill those needs. We should not consider that a duty or an obligation, but as a privilege to do the work of Jesus Christ, to be his apostles, his agents, to help other people come to see his goodness through the work and the effort and the love we offer to them.

I would like to say thank you to Corinna Ramsey, Mary Oswald, and all the other people who helped put on Matthew 25. It was a wonderful thing to watch these young people work together in faith and love. On behalf of the whole parish, thank you!