May Jesus Christ be praised and may his holy Mother pray for
us.
Today we hear about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is precious. The Kingdom of God is awaited with
patience. The Kingdom of God transforms
the world.
In our reading from the gospel of Matthew we hear three
parables from the Lord Jesus. The first is the parable of the weeds and the
wheat. A man sows good seed in his field
and the enemy, who approaches in darkness, sows weeds in the same field. The laborers of the household want to remove
the weeds because they would threaten or could prevent the growth of the wheat. The master, however, tells the servants to
wait for the harvest time. The weeds
could not be removed because they could damage the wheat. Some of the harvest could be lost. And the harvest is precious. The holy people of God, we who grow and
develop and make ready for the harvest even among the weeds, is the precious
harvest.
In the second parable the Lord Jesus tells us that the
Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.
The smallest of seeds grows into the largest of plants. When full grown this plant is large enough
for the birds of the sky, an image of all of the peoples of the earth, to come
and dwell in its branches. However, the
growth of this largest of plants from the tiniest of seeds must be awaited in
patience. With patience, the person who
sows the seed must wait for the beauty of the plant to unfold. It is the way of parents who watch and wait
for their children to grow into those men and women that Christ has called them
to be. It is the way of priests, who lovingly
tend the vineyard, to see the unfolding of the gifts of grace poured out and
stirred up among the people of God entrusted to our care. And it is the way of the people of God, the
holy people of God, to patiently and lovingly and confidently attend to the
full flowering of priestly grace in their shepherds. The kingdom of God, the full manifestation of
the glory that is to be revealed in us, is awaited in patience.
In the third parable we hear that the Kingdom of heaven is
like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until
the whole batch was leavened. The small
measure of yeast transformed the whole batch.
That is the mission of the Kingdom in the world: to transform the world
into an offering to the Father. To
transform the world is the mission of all of the people of God. To transform the world is the mission of each
of the people of God. All of us,
baptized into Christ Jesus, are called to be agents of transformation and
sanctification in the world.
But in order to transform the world, we must first ourselves
be transformed. We must respond to the
Lord’s invitation to conversion and repentance, confident, as our reading from
the book of Wisdom instructs, that we are given good ground for hope and that
the Lord judges with clemency. We must
use our freedom to allow the Spirit of God to pray within us, to aid us in our
weakness, and to intercede for us. Each
of us is a unique, unrepeatable and precious manifestation of the love of
God. Each of us is called in baptism and
strengthened by the seed of the Word and the power of the Sacraments to become
a measure of yeast for the batch of flour.
The kingdom of God, built of the living stones, transforms the whole
world.
As we celebrate this Eucharist today, let us claim our
identity as part of the precious harvest of God. Let us pray for the grace to patiently await
the full flowering of grace in ourselves and those around us. And let us receive the strength from the Lord
to be a transforming presence in our community and witness to the Kingdom of
God. Amen.
Preached at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic
Church, Monroe, NC
