OT XVIII [B]: Ex 16:2-4, 12-15; Eph 4:17, 20-24; Jn 6:24-35

 
Last week Jesus performed the multiplication of the loaves; and all the people who witnessed the amazing miracle wanted to make Jesus king.

The people who sought Jesus in today’s Gospel still want nothing more than a full stomach, but Our Lord is trying to help them see that what they crave is what that full stomach normally gives them: life, not just for a few decades, but for eternity.

As Jesus reminds them, full stomachs didn’t enable those Israelites under Moses to live forever, even though the Lord provided them with manna to eat. 

Jesus didn't come to earth for an ego-trip; he came to fulfill a mission. And that mission is not to bring paradise on earth - which is what they want: "you are... looking for me... because you had all the bread you wanted to eat." Rather, he came to bring them "bread from heaven," the truth and freedom that come from living in communion with God. He doesn't cave in to the temptation to satisfy a natural desire for power and popularity, for merely human success.

 

Like the Israelites in the First Reading the people were still seeking signs, but now the moment had come for faith, a faith that leads to no longer living as the Gentiles did, just focused on immediate needs and concerns of this life and not seeing the bigger picture where this life is a pilgrimage toward eternal life. 

The Israelites who grumbled in the desert in the First Reading didn’t live to see the Promised Land due to their lack of trust in God; the people in today’s Gospel are being extended an opportunity to one day enter into the true Promised Land, but they have to trust the new Moses–Jesus–to lead them.

 

Material things do not necessarily bring us happiness. That is a fact of life. It is a hard fact to understand sometimes, especially in a society that tries very hard to teach us otherwise.

Buddhism is a religion based on seeking enlightenment, and not desiring material or tangible things. They believe that suffering is caused by desire. The principle is, we desire, we suffer because we do not own the thing we desire, and once we own the thing, we desire something else, so the suffering continues. There are too many desires in the world, and a human will never be truly happy.

 

It is very common to get into a mode where we think, "If only I had object X, my life would be perfect and I would be happy." We really want something: a new TV, a new car, a special pair of shoes, whatever. Then we buy it and we love having it for a few days. But over time we get bored or it wears us out. We can see this pattern repeated constantly in our own life. For example, our parents and grandparents likely spent thousands and thousands of dollars on toys for us as we were growing up: Dump trucks and Barbie dolls and video games and electric cars and on and on and on. All of those toys got boring or broken or outgrown eventually. They brought happiness for a moment or a week, but over time they became worthless and our desire turned to a new object.

This kind of behaviour isn't only seen in humans. Two dogs might be eating out of their bowls, and one of them goes to eat out of the other bowl, simply because they have a default assumption that everyone else is getting the "better deal".

Jesus was asking His listeners to change their hearts and minds in order to see God in a new light. Instead of asking for bread for their stomachs as their ancestors did when Moses led them out of Egypt they should ask for the Bread of Life, the Bread Jesus was going to give them, His Body and Blood. Let us remember that the Eucharist we celebrate and receive this day IS Jesus, the Bread of Life come down from Heaven. And let us nourish our souls with this Heavenly manna and carry Jesus to our homes and workplaces, radiating Jesus’ love, mercy and compassion all around us.

 

 

O.T. XVII [B]: 2Kgs 4:42-44, Eph 4:1-6, John 6:1-15

Today’s readings invite us to become humble instruments in God’s hands by sharing our blessings with our needy brothers and sisters. 

The miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 is found in all four Gospels, although the context and emphasis vary.  This is the only miracle, other than the resurrection, that is told in all the Gospels, a fact that speaks of its importance to the early Church.

No Bible scholar doubts that all six bread miracles in the Gospels are about the Eucharist. John uses this story in his Gospel to introduce Jesus’ profound and extended reflection on the Eucharist and the Bread of Life. John makes a special mention here that the Jewish feast of Passover was near, drawing a connection of this miracle with ancient Passover. 

This miraculous feeding in the deserted place had precedents: Moses, Elijah, and Elisha had each fed people without resources.  The present miracle resembles particularly the one performed by Elisha (2 Kgs 4:42-44).  In both cases, unlike the manna in the desert, there were leftovers, for everyone there ate, and had enough and more than enough to be filled. The apostles were told to collect the left over-s. That itself has a Eucharistic overtone. Otherwise, broken crumbs of bread which could not be decently used again may not be ordered to be collected. It also can mean we shall not waste any food that we have. Because everyone needs bread to live and no one can survive without food. And if there are people not able to get sleep because their stomach is hurting due to hunger while we waste food, is certainly a sin.

At the sight of the crowd who had been listening to Jesus for long his sympathy was kindled. They were hungry and tired, and they must be fed. No one asked Jesus to provide the crowd with food.  It was Jesus who first expressed his concern about the people's need for food.

One of the greatest tragedies of our times is the fact that millions of people are reduced to starvation throughout the world.  In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty". Every year 15 million children die of hunger. For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years. 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days! The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Nearly one in four people, 1.8 billion - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. When you get on the internet these days you see the ad asking help for hungry children in Yemen. Children are dying there from hunger. It is a country with 100% Muslim population. But the rich Islamic countries won’t help them because that is not their concern. Saudi Arabia offered to help Canada build 100 mosques for the Muslim immigrants, but not to help the poor, even the poor in Islamic countries. (That is another issue altogether).

God has arranged the world in such a way, that every person may have the food he or she needs. Food in the world should suffice to feed God's children but it will never suffice to fill the greed of men. One of the reasons for world hunger is priorities. Those of us who live in an industrialized society place a high priority on comfort and convenience. Our standard of living places a significant strain on the world economy. Certainly this is something Christians must consider in terms of their own economic lifestyle. At a time when people are not getting enough to eat, we are living a lifestyle far beyond what many could even imagine. We have a great challenge before us. We must not only consider what we can do to feed the hungry, but we must also consider what we should do to limit our indulgent lifestyle.

Hunger and poverty are the consequences of the selfishness of people. So the solution to this devastating problem lies with man alone. One doesn’t have to be rich to help others. Pointing to the poor widow who put two coins in the temple treasury Jesus said, others gave from their abundance but this poor widow gave from her shortage. The boy that shared his bread with Jesus had a similar attitude too.

He had not much to offer but in what he had Jesus found the materials for a miracle. Jesus needs what we can bring him. It may not be much but he needs it. It may well be that the world is denied miracle after miracle and triumph after triumph because we will not bring to Jesus what we have. He wants us to make good use of all his gifts. And the generosity of the boy contains a lesson for us. And Jesus reminds us as he did the Apostles: “Gather the fragments left over,
so that nothing will be wasted.” 

 

OT XVI [B] Jer 23:1-6, Eph 2:13-18, Mk 6:30-34

 Jesus sent out his disciples with the mission of bringing God's message to the people. When they came back from their mission they reported to Jesus all that they had done.  The demanding crowds were so insistent that they had no time even to eat; so Jesus took them to a lonely place that they might have peace and rest for a while.

Today's passage places before us the rhythm of the Christian life. Go out from the presence of God, into the presence of men, and return from the presence of men to the presence of God. It is like the rhythm of sleep and work.  We cannot work unless we have our time of rest; and sleep will not embrace anyone who has not worked until he is tired.

 This passage very clearly warns us against the danger of too constant activity. No man can work without rest; and no man can live his Christian life without giving time to be with God. Dallas Willard says that practicing silence and solitude is the most important spiritual discipline for people today. In our busy, noisy world we need to "unhook" and get away to be alone with our Lord.

Jesus began his public ministry with 40 days of withdrawal into the desert wilderness to fast and pray in silence and solitude. He was alone, hungry, hot and thirsty, surrounded by wild animals, and tested by Satan. But the truth of Jesus' fast is that the Father, the Scriptures, and ministering angels strengthened Jesus! His time alone with God and quietly focused only on him empowered him to resist Satan's temptations (which came at the end of the 40 days) and it focused and prepared him for his public ministry. Interspersed throughout Jesus' ministry of preaching, and healing, we see him withdraw from the crowds again and again – often getting up very early to do so – in order to be quiet and alone with the Father (e.g., Mark 1:35, 3:13, 6:31, 46).

Jesus' rhythm of life is the secret to how he got renewed in his Father's love and empowered by the Spirit for his life and ministry. In quiet prayer he listened to the Father and received discernment for many things.

Michael Faraday, an early pioneer of electromagnetic current, once addressed a convocation of scientists. For an hour, he held the audience spellbound with his lecture on the nature of the magnet. After he had finished, he received a thundering ovation. The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, stood to congratulate him. The applause thundered again. Just as quickly, a deadened silence pervaded the audience. Faraday had left. It was the hour of a midweek prayer service in a little church of which he was a member. Do we have a similar commitment? One of the reasons we gather for worship each week is for the refreshment of our spirits, the recharging of our spiritual batteries. We need to shut the world out and focus our attention on God's presence in our lives. Jesus knew the value of getting away to a quiet place.

Our Sabbath rest is often misunderstood as a time of non-activity. It is a time away with Jesus and not a time to do nothing. Often our Sunday rest is just a relaxation and nothing more. We have to go with Jesus to deserted place. Throughout the Scriptures we find the purpose of rest as a means to center our hearts on God. In him alone we find true rest. All labor is oriented toward this ultimate goal.

 Sometimes we can wonder why we get so emotionally and spiritually exhausted by the busy-ness of our lives. It's because we aren't recharging our spiritual batteries. Stress, discouragement, and other crippling emotions can wear us out if we aren't daily reinforcing our faith in Jesus Christ.

Without prayer, study, and time alone with God, our well will soon run dry - we will have nothing substantial to offer others. We need to make a commitment to a regular prayer life, not one that shifts with our moods. We need to pray daily, to have a daily quiet time when we can speak to Christ, pray for our loved ones, reflect on the scriptures, or read some good, solid spiritual book.

It doesn't have to be a lot of time - ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes at night is a good start - but it has to be consistent, and that means self-discipline.

 

"The fruit of solitude," explains Richard Foster, "is increased sensitivity and compassion for others."

The crowd saw Jesus and his men going away. But some people walked round and were there before Jesus and his disciples arrived. They earnestly sought the company of men of God. More than ever, today, men crave to be in the company of   men of God, to experience the holiness of God. Today we are entrusted with this mission – to impart the experience of the holiness of God to our contemporaries. For that we require to do two things. First of all find time to be with God, secondly find time to be with men. Hence, the rhythm of Christian life is the alternative meeting with God in the secret place and serving men in the market place. Let’s try to find some true rest on Sunday, not going alone, but with Christ, who invites us come away by yourself to a deserted place and have some rest.

 

OT XIV [B] Ez 2:2-5; II Cor 12:7-10; Mk 6:1-6

Today’s readings introduce Jesus as a prophet and explain how prophets and other messengers from God inevitably suffer rejection. Most of the famous men have experienced rejection, not once, but many times. Colonel Sanders is the founder of KFC. He started his dream at 65 years old! He got a social security check for only $105 and was mad. Instead of complaining he did something about it. He thought restaurant owners would love his fried chicken recipe, use it, sales would increase, and he’d get a percentage of it. He drove around the country knocking on doors, sleeping in his car, wearing his white suit. Do you know how many times people said “no” till he got one yes? 1009 times!

 Walt Disney was the man who gave us Disney World and Mickey Mouse. His first animation company went bankrupt. He was fired by a news editor because he lacked imagination. Legend has it he was turned down 302 times before he got financing for creating Disney World.

Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime! Just one to a friend. Despite that he kept painting and finished over 800 pieces. Now everyone wants to buy them and his most expensive painting is valued at $142.7 million.

Today's gospel passage shows how some people of Jesus' home town, Nazareth, did not accept him as a prophet because they knew him and his family. They knew that he was a carpenter with no schooling in Mosaic Law and “knew” that he could not be the promised Messiah who would come from Bethlehem as a descendant of David’s royal family. Besides, they were angry when Jesus did not work any miracles in Nazareth but, with prophetic courage, he accused them of lack of faith, and warned that he would take to other people his preaching and healing ministry.

Throughout the life of Jesus there were two diametrically opposing views towards Jesus. The Infant Jesus was joyfully accepted by the shepherds. But, the infant was rejected by Herod, and he sought ways to annihilate him. The wise men from the East recognized and accepted him; but the wise men of his society – the scribes and Pharisees rejected him. Many simple people from all over Galilee and neighbouring places flocked around him; but his co-villagers rejected him. Sinful people like Zachhaeus, Mary Magdalene, the Samaritan woman etc. accepted him; but he was rejected by priests and religious leaders who were supposed to be holy.

 

The people of Nazareth despised Jesus because they knew his family. Every person that comes into the world is confronted with a choice: to accept or reject Jesus. Fortunately we have accepted Jesus as our Saviour.  It is not enough to have accepted Jesus once; we must renew our acceptance day after day. Our acceptance demands that we must always be attentive to discover what God wants from us:  he manifests his will in prayer, through His Word in the Scriptures, through the people we meet and through every event in our lives, and in nature. The obstacles that prevent from accepting Jesus are the same that prevented people of Nazareth from accepting him – they are   “pride” and “ego”. Hence, it is important that we overcome our pride and ego, then we will gain the courage to accept Jesus.

Ego will not allow us to accept the shortcomings of our life and will try to cover them up from others. Paul in the second reading tells us of his personal struggles and weaknesses he had. St Paul was not perfect; in fact, no saint was perfect. They were human beings, just like us, and they had to face problems, hardship, suffering, and temptation, just as we do.

They did not live carefree lives; in fact, it was their very challenges and failings that God used to make them into saints. That's what St Paul is trying to tell us in today's Second Reading. He says that although God has given him extraordinary mystical experiences, God has also given him a "thorn in his flesh, an angel of Satan to beat him." Paul prayed repeatedly for God to remove this thorn, but God refused, in order "to keep him from being too elated."

This strange passage raises two questions.

First, what was this thorn? No one really knows, but scholars have many theories. It may have been a physical ailment of some kind; or a particular temptation, like lust or greed; or the discouragement he constantly felt from being rejected by his Jewish confreres; or it may also have been his fiery temperament, which always seemed to get him into trouble. Whatever it was, it was a continual source of pain and irritation to St Paul.

The second question is: why didn't God take this thorn away?

St Paul tells us that it continually reminded him of his human weakness, inspiring him to depend more fully on God's grace. This is what he means when he writes: "when I am weak, then I am strong."

And this should be a comforting thought for us. It means that our thorns, whatever they may be, are not signs that God's anger or displeasure, but signs that he is teaching us, as he taught St Paul, true wisdom, the wisdom of humility and trust in God. As painful as it is, he recognizes that God is permitting it for a reason; to cure him of his tendency to arrogance and self-absorption.

Likewise, when God allows difficulties to plague us, he is not absent from them, but at work through them,  like a good doctor with a sharp scalpel.

During this Mass Jesus will renew his commitment to us through the sacrifice of the Eucharist. When he does, let's renew our commitment to him, and ask him to help us accept the thorns he allows in our lives, so that we can also experience the full transforming power of his love.

 

 

 

OT XIII  Wis 1:13-15, 2:23-24; II Cor 8:7,9,13-15; Mk 5:21-43

A Jesuit theologian Peter Arokiadass was dying of  cancer.  On the eve of his death, when asked by a relative why God gave him, a priest, such sickness, Arokiadoss replied: “No, God didn’t give me this sickness. All of us have cancer cells which are under control. Most likely because of my lifestyle or food or sleeping habits, I might have given cause for these cells to grow and destroy the good cells. God does not cause sickness; we cause it ourselves.”

The Book of Wisdom, tells us that God gave us life and health, and that it was the jealousy of Satan which produced illness and death. We often feel that God is the cause of all births/deaths, but Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it in abundance.” Indeed, God is a God of Life, and “death is not God’s doing.” It is, rather, we who cause death in myriad forms – through our sin, selfishness, pride, power-plays, greed, and godlessness. Nonetheless, the Lord of Life bids us to touch people and heal them.

 

Today’s Gospel describes two of our Lord’s miracles, the healing of a woman who suffered from a chronic bleeding disease, and the returning of the dead daughter of Jairus to life.   These healings teach us that Jesus wills life, full life, for all God’s children. These miracles were worked by Jesus as rewards for the trusting faith of a synagogue ruler and of a woman with a hemorrhage. Although the faith of the ruler may have been defective, and the woman’s faith may have been a bit superstitious, Jesus amply rewarded the faith they had by granting them health and life.

The Mosaic Law (Lv 15:25-27) declared her unclean and shut her off from the worship of God and the fellowship of her friends. That may be why she decided to try to touch the tassels of Jesus’ garment secretly. The woman’s boldness in touching Jesus’ garment — which, according to the Law, made Jesus unclean — could have angered the Master. But her faith in the healing power of Jesus was so strong that she risked breaking all the social rules to seek what she believed He could do for her. By affectionately calling her “daughter,” Jesus established a relationship with her, made her his family, and gave her the assurance that she was healed:   “Daughter, your Faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”   By trusting in the power of God and doing His will, she was not only physically cured but was also fully restored to a normal religious and social life. It was her touching Jesus’ garment – that was a major factor in her healing.

 

Why did Jesus go all the way to Jairus's house and take his little daughter by the hand in order to bring her back to life? Why not just do it from a distance?

And why didn't Jesus cure the woman with bleeding without her having to touch him? It is because God wants to be close to us; he wants to live in friendship with us. And since we are human beings, not angels, that closeness, that friendship requires not only spiritual contact, but physical contact as well. Our God doesn't keep his distance; he walks by our side.

 

We all know in our heads that God is always present, always watching over us, always wanting to be part of everything we do. But it is one thing to know this in our heads, and quite another to know it in our hearts, with a mature faith.

When the Christians in Armenia were suffering persecution from Turkish conquerors, back in the eleventh century, there were many opportunities to move faith from the head to the heart. There is one story about a Christian girl who had been captured in a raid. They tried to force her to renounce her Christian faith, but she refused, even in the face of their threats and their weapons.

So, instead of making her a slave, the pagan soldiers decided to play a cruel game with her by throwing her to their battle dogs. They put her in the kennel that night, and came back in the morning to see what had happened. They couldn't believe their eyes. In the bright light of dawn they saw the young girl kneeling in prayer, with the largest and most savage of all the dogs standing right next to her. That dog snapped at every other dog that tried to come near the child.

The pagan soldiers were terrified by the sight and ran away, crying out at the top of their lungs, "There is a God here! There is a God here!"

And they were right - God was with that child, standing by her side.

God wants to be part of our lives, to walk with us, because he knows we need his guidance and encouragement if we are going to journey safely through this fallen world and into his heavenly Kingdom.

Today, as we receive holy Communion, Jesus renews his commitment to be our companion through life, let's renew our commitment to make good use of all the gifts he has given us through his Church. Not just the sacraments, but also the sacramentals - small signs of our faith in God's presence, like holy water, house blessings, crucifixes, and sacred images can help us increase that awareness.  Let’s try to touch the fringe of his garments with faith and seek his healing touch for our wounded soul.

 

 

OT XII [B] SUNDAY: Job 38:1, 8-11; II Cor 5:14-17; Mk 4:35-41

The role of God in calming the storms of life is the central theme of the readings for this Storm Sunday. The first reading tells us how the Lord speaks to Job whose life was devastated by storms of the total loss of his possessions, the deaths of his dear ones, and a whole-body disease that left him in misery. It also states that, although the wicked prosper and the innocent suffer for a time, YAHWEH finally redresses the wrongs suffered by the innocent!

Throughout Mark’s Gospel, Jesus works miracles as a sign of head-on engagement with the forces of sin and evil in this world. In the miracle stories, Jesus’ unequivocal triumph over these forces verifies His true identity as the Messiah of God. The miracle of the stilling of the sea is described in Mark for the same purpose. By describing this miracle, Mark also assures the first-century believers that nothing can harm the Church as long as the risen Lord is with them. Mark’s audience in Rome in the 60s A.D. surely felt that way as they faced the persecution by the Emperor Nero during which both Peter and Paul were probably martyred.

Many of the Fathers of the Church consider this miracle story as an allegory of the early Church. The ocean, in the Old Testament, because of its mystery, power, and unpredictability, was often used as a symbol for evil and chaos. The boat in the stormy lake is a symbol of the Church facing challenges and heresies from inside and various forms of suppression and persecution from outside. The early Church faced fierce persecution in the first three centuries. It was followed by a calm period, but that period was plagued with heresies, as many as 22 heresies, culminating in the Protestant Reformation Movement. The faithful in such situations wondered if Jesus had deserted the Church. But in their desperate cry for help they were able to experience the inner peace and strength of Jesus.   Very often the Church and the faithful have no control over the political and social developments of our society. But, no matter what we are experiencing, we can — with the help of Jesus — find peace. It is the peace which only Jesus can give. And it is a peace which no person, no thing, and no situation can take away from us.

 

We need to remember that Jesus is always with us in the boat of our life. All of us are making a journey across the sea of time to the shore of eternity. Hence, it is natural that, occasionally, we all experience different types of violent storms in our lives: physical storms, emotional storms, and spiritual storms. We face storms of sorrow, doubt, anxiety, worry, temptation and passion. The storms we encounter in life are often what make us or break us. These storms can either bring us closer to God and one another or alienate us from God and others. And it is only Jesus who can still these storms for us. Jesus can give us real peace in the storm of sorrow.

Victor Hugo, who is famous for his novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, also wrote a story called “Ninety-Three.” It tells of a ship caught in a dangerous storm on the high seas. At the height of the storm, the frightened sailors heard a terrible crashing noise below the deck. They knew at once that this new noise came from a cannon, part of the ship’s cargo, that had broken loose. It was moving back and forth with the swaying of the ship, crashing into the side of the ship with terrible impact. Knowing that it could cause the ship to sink, two brave sailors volunteered to make the dangerous attempt to retie the loose cannon. They knew the danger of a shipwreck from the cannon was greater than the fury of the storm. — That is like human life. Storms of life may blow about us, but it is not these exterior storms that pose the gravest danger. It is the terrible corruption that can exist within us which can overwhelm us. The furious storm outside may be overwhelming, but what is going on inside can pose the greater threat to our lives. Our only hope lies in conquering that wild enemy: the fear, the fear of the uncertain. Fear comes from lack of faith. Unfortunately storms that rage within us we cannot cure by ourselves. It takes the power of God’s love, as revealed in Jesus Christ. He is our only hope of stilling the tempest that can harm our souls and cripple our lives. That’s what the disciples learned this day on the Sea of Galilee.

 

Every week during the Mass we pray the Creed. The Creed sums up what we believe as Christians, what the Church teaches, what God has revealed to the world about Himself and the purpose of our lives. Unfortunately, most of us have become so used to the Creed that we often fail to savor the delicious truths that it contains.

We pray: "We believe in one God, the Father almighty." Almighty is a synonym for all-powerful, omnipotent. That's our Lord; he alone is all-powerful; nothing is difficult for him. When we are threatened by storms of life let’s affirm our faith in the Lord who calmed the storm for the apostles. Let’s wake up the Lord who seems to be sleeping in the boat of our life and ask him to save our life and strengthen our faith in him.

 

 

OT XI (B): Ez 17: 22-24; II Cor 5:6-10; Mk 4:26-34

Jesus’ favorite topic was "the Kingdom of God."  His first public sermon began with "The Kingdom of God is at hand", and from then on he kept talking about it, as in today's Gospel. But not a single parable fully explains all the aspects of the kingdom. Kingdom of God was this favorite theme because that is where he came to lead us.

If there is a Kingdom, there must also be a King, and if there is a King, there must be subjects. That's how he sees the Church, as a Kingdom, not merely as some kind of club. When we pray, "Thy Kingdom come," do we mean the same thing that Jesus meant when he taught us that prayer? God's Kingdom is the realm where hearts obey him out of faith and love.

If we really want to help Christ redeem the kingdom of this world by transforming it, through his grace, into the Kingdom of Christ, we have to keep hearkening to the King and carrying out his commands, even when they are uncomfortable for our selfish tendencies.

 

Jesus always used stories or parables to teach people. An argument speaks to the mind alone, but a story appeals to the whole person: mind and heart and imagination. If an argument is not understood straight away it is lost, but a story tends to stay in the memory, enlightening the mind and heart at a later time when the person is ready to grasp its meaning. We are not often, certainly not always, in the mood to hear arguments, but we are always ready to hear a story or to look at an image. By teaching in parables, he is trying to explain deeper spiritual realities using the everyday realities understood by his listeners. 

The picture painted in the Parable of the Mustard Seed by Jesus is of the humble beginnings of the Church experiencing an explosive rate of growth. While growth itself was the primary focus of the first seed parable, the mustard seed comparison emphasizes the contrast between tiny beginnings and tremendous endings.

The tiny mustard seed, growing to be a tree, symbolizes Jesus’ offer of refuge and life in God’s Kingdom. Here, Jesus uses a shrub coming from a tiny seed (Jn 12:24), to represent Kingdom growth, consistent with other tree/Kingdom references (Ez 17:23 and Dn 4:11-21).

The example of the mustard seed shows that it starts small: in Jesus’ earthly ministry it went from him to twelve disciples, then to thousands by the time narrated in the Acts of the Apostles, and to the whole world and throughout history. 

 

The Kingdom doesn’t just represent something small that has an incredible capacity for growth and expansion; like the cool shade of the mustard plant, it makes room for everyone to find rest and consolation because God wants everyone to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

The virtues that give true, lasting beauty to our lives, that give our lives meaning and deep happiness (virtues like wisdom, courage, self-control, and Christ-like love), are like the seeds in the Lord's parables. They are planted in our hearts at baptism, and as we follow and obey Christ in our daily lives, they grow and flourish.

We can all plant tiny seeds in the form of words of love, acts of encouragement, and deeds of charity, mercy and forgiveness. Parents and teachers can plant a lot of seeds in the minds of their children and students. The Holy Spirit will touch the hearts of the recipients of these seeds sown by us and He will effect the growth of the kingdom in their souls and lives. As the apostle Paul once said of his ministry, “Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7).

The Kingdom of God is the growth of God’s rule in human hearts that occurs when man does the will of God and surrenders his life to God. The seed of Faith lies dormant within each of us. When we permit the Holy Spirit to nurture it with TLC (tender loving care), it grows miraculously into gigantic proportions. The growth is slow and microscopic in the beginning. But this seed grows by using the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us through the Word of God, the Mass, the Sacraments, and prayer. As we learn God’s will from His words and try to put these words into practice, we participate in the growth of God’s Kingdom on earth, a growth which will be completed in our Heavenly life. Let’s pray today for a special anointing of the Holy Spirit to help us to be doers of the word of God, and thereby offer our lives to God and for the cause of His Kingdom.