Hearth & Altar

His heart was moved with pity. That is the Sacred Heart in action - Jesus looking at the crowds and feeling for them what a shepherd feels when the sheep have no one to lead them. Moved. Not observed and assessed. Moved. The pity is not condescension. It is the love that cannot remain unmoved in the presence of need.

I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself. The Lord's word to Israel at Sinai is the word underneath the pity: the carrying, the bringing-to-myself, the making-of-a-special-possession. The sheep without a shepherd are the people God has been carrying on eagle wings since Egypt. The harvest is abundant because God has been preparing it longer than the laborers have been looking at it.

God proves his love in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Not while we were improving, not while we were showing progress - while we were still helpless and ungodly and enemies. The proof of the love is precisely the timing: before we had anything to offer.

The harvest is abundant. The laborers are few. Ask the master to send laborers. The prayer precedes the sending - the asking is the first act of the harvest.

• For our family, that we would be moved with pity the way Jesus was - that the crowds without a shepherd would produce in us not assessment but compassion, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who are the harvest - the sheep without a shepherd in our parish neighborhood - that laborers would be sent to them, we pray to the Lord.
• For those reconciled to God from being enemies, that the boasting in God through Lord Jesus would be their interior posture this week, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Sacred Heart month, for the heart that was moved with pity and sent the Twelve, we pray to the Lord.

Ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers. This week, pray specifically for the harvest in your neighborhood, your workplace, your family. The prayer precedes the sending. You may be the laborer the prayer releases.

He bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself. Tell your children this - literally, in these words. You are the eagle wings. You are the carrying. You are the bringing-to-God that is your vocation as a parent. They are being brought to the mountain. You are how.