Word to the Wise
Friday, January 27, 2023 - Friday in the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time
[Heb 10:32-39 and Mark 4:26-34]"This is how it is with the Kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come." [Mark]
Agricultural imagery plays a big role in Jesus' parables because he was preaching and ministering to a population for whom subsistence farming was the only way they could feed themselves! In most cases, they did not own the land they farmed and were tenant farmers, owing a portion of the crop to the owner who was often absentee and represented by an agent or middle-man. A famine of any kind (weather, insects, disease) could have dire consequences. Yet, there are those moments in the life of the farmer or gardener when the wonder of it all can take hold. How does a small, even tiny, seed yield such a large plant? Anyone who grows basil herb or petunia flowers from seed can testify to the dramatic difference!!
In my years of preaching, I have occasionally had the experience of someone coming up to me and saying that a single sentence in a homily had had a dramatic effect on his or her life. But the seed of the gospel can be expressed in other ways than by pulpit preaching, thank God!! I can remember a student, who knew about a difficulty I was facing, offered a line from one of St. Paul's letters which was a great comfort to me. Single acts of kindness can be seeds of great consequence. A farmer or gardener cannot ordinarily keep track of every single seed but he or she knows that those tiny things can mean the difference between life and death. Each of us has those seeds of consequence handed to us in baptism. We may plant, others may water, and God gives the increase. [1 Cor. 3:6]. AMEN