13/06/2026
Reflection: 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
In this Sunday’s Gospel we’ll once again hear Jesus’ famous words that the “harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few”.
Perhaps each time that Gospel line comes around it resonates with our context all the more, with considerations around clustering and mergers becoming a prominent part of parish lives.
Faced with these words, we might see vast fields filled with a bumper harvest and at the same time acknowledge that we do not have the resource or structure to even make a start. It might feel like we have to walk away from some fields, without gathering in the harvest.
And, yet.
It might dawn on us, too, that there can be no context as difficult as the original context when the harvest was utterly daunting, for it was the world, all time, all history, all peoples. The labourers were the few you could count on your hand. If there is a case for despondency or resignation it was surely back then and not now.
As someone who is reading this reflection in a diocesan email, you are already part of the reason to be hopeful: you have responded to a definite call with an openness of heart and mind. Thank you for your generosity.
That’s how it begins, always, even against the odds because the Lord Jesus wasn’t talking about particular buildings or structures: he was talking about people. If the task seems impossible, it probably is if were up to us alone.
Thank God, it isn’t.
Fr Ryan Service
