St James Catholic Church

As school is coming to an end and graduations are taking place, Jesus the rabbi and teacher, continues to teach all of us using parables.  A parable is a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.  Mark, in his Gospel, has Jesus asking the question, “To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God?”  He tells a story about seeds.  The bible is full of agricultural metaphors.  People lived closer to the earth in those days.  Still, if you ever planted a seed, you can relate to those two parables in our reading.  Nothing looks less impressive than seeds.  But we put seeds  in the ground and a wonder transpires, a miraculous, imperceptible process unfolds.  Eventually the tiny seeds become a bountiful harvest.  Our responsibility is simply to plant the seed.  We trust the mysterious power of God, for you have no idea what a large result can come from a very small beginning.  The first hearers understood that the seeds were the Word of God that Jesus was scattering throughout the world.

We sow the seeds of the Kingdom of God whenever we do the will of God.  Whenever God’s purposes are accomplished, to whatever small degree, there lives and grows the Kingdom of God.  And how can we know the will of God?  It is precisely what is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  Through Jesus we know that it is better to reconcile than to divide, better to serve than to dominate, better to forgive than to avenge, better to be prayerful than anxious, better to be humble than proud, better to love than to hate.  If we think this kind of thing won’t work in our kind of world, we are mistaken.  Christ not only assures  us that it will work, but reminds us that God, who works mostly underground, out of sight and with infinite patience, will see the process to its fulfillment.  I guess for us as disciples and students of the Lord, we all have still much to learn, and more importantly, much to practice.

Love, Peace, Joy,

-Fr. Bob