God has planted goodness in the world for us – Matt 13:44-46

17th Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross Parish.

There are good things in the world.  And that’s worth celebrating.  Sometimes we work to seek those out.  I think of the joy musicians feel when, after hours upon hours of laborious practice, they participate in presenting something truly beautiful and receive the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of a crowd.  The joy of being a cultivator of beauty is something worth seeking out.  Sometimes we just stumble on a good thing.  Maybe we’re in an accident or in trouble and a friend or even a stranger reaches out a hand and we encounter true goodness, unsought, unexpected, maybe even initially unwelcome, but eventually deeply appreciated.

God will grow his kingdom to include us – Matt 13:24-43

Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time; Holy Cross Parish.

If you had to guess whether she was wheat or weed, you’d probably have guessed weed.  A college dropout, who’d become a journalist and gotten mixed up with the Communists, who had fallen for a sorry excuse of a man who told her he’d leave her if she didn’t get an abortion and then left her anyway when she did.  If our eager servants had gone out, ready to pluck weeds, they’d probably have taken one look at this ne’er-do-well, and plucked her.  But the master bids the servants wait, because God knows better. 

God is with us while we await the lavish harvest – Matt 13:1-9, Rom 8:18-23

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time; Holy Cross Parish.

I wonder what we focus on when we hear this parable.  A lot of treatments of this parable focus on the dangers and the failures: birds who devour (a la Hitchcock?), paucity of soil, scorching sun, choking thorns.  And they’re real.  There are dangers and in the world.  But they can’t dominate our focus.  Because as we heard two weeks ago on the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul, if even the gates of Hell assail the Church, they will not prevail.  As the Sermon of the Mount ends, even if we’re on rocky ground, buffeted by storms, our house will not fail.  As St. John XXIII put it, the prophets of doom have had their say, and the Church has found them wanting.