For some
reason that right now escapes me, I thought it would work fine to have this
past week be my last at the parish, and then move to Notre Dame and start
summer school on Monday. So, the past
week has been an odd mix of packing, moving and unpacking, physically as well
as trying to wrap up projects or at least package them neatly enough that they
could be handed over, to another member of our pastoral team, a parishioner, or
just offered up to God. Apart from my
formal teaching in the school, which wrapped up nicely, so many of my ‘projects’
here are in fact people’s lives, and lives don’t wrap up into nice neat little
packages. As I’ve been praying this week
with these scriptures, it strikes me that I’m leaving here with a lot of seeds
still in the ground. I say that about
these two parish communities, I say that about many of the individuals and
families who I’ve been privileged to serve in their more fragile, transparent
moments, and I say that about myself: my priesthood, my discipleship.
And that’s
not to say that I haven’t seen any sprouting: I’ve seen some marvelous things
spring up here and it would be impossible for me to over-use the word privilege
to describe how I’ve been placed to accompany and nurture people as some
amazing new fruit has been born in their lives.
And I’ll always be grateful for the ways in which this place has drawn
priesthood out of me, for my renewed appreciation of the beauty and the
sacrifice of family life, for the way that people’s hunger for the sacraments and
the fervor of the convert and the re-vert refuels my own zeal and awe at what
God does for us, for the ways I’ve been brought to the dead, the dying and the
bereaved, and trusted to proclaim resurrection, and as I hear my own words
re-echo had my own hope strengthened.
Truly, there is blooming a-plenty in this place.
But,
even more, there are seeds in our ground.
And that’s not a bad thing, because we know God gives the growth. It’s a hard thing, because we’re by nature
impatient (which is a problem) and because we truly hunger to see the good
things God gives (which is a grace). It’s
hard to see only soil when we were created to live in a lush garden. But, God is acting, He’s bringing us back
there. It’s hard to walk by faith and
not by sight, as St. Paul puts it. But
we’re not walking alone. God has acted
to bring us together as Church to walk together, to walk with Christ as our
goal and our guide, and all the saints with him. We walk it with St. Paul, with St.
Stanislaus, who knew that walking the Church’s walk was far from easy, we walk
it with our cross, but we know that cross is “Holy.”
And as
we await the fullness of growth, the bright light of day, we give thanks for
the dawn’s first light by which we can walk.
And we’ll do that a lot better if our eyes are open to what we’re
looking for. Ezekiel, the Israelite
priest-prophet who saw his Temple destroyed by the Babylonians, who lost
everything and was exiled, and was very realistic about the place sin, his and
his compatriots’, had played in their downfall, tells a tale in our first
reading of hope, of restoration, of grace in the face of desolation. He tells of a sprig being plucked, torn,
broken off: a violent act of sacrifice, but one that opens the way to a great
reversal. This twig becomes a mighty
cedar, a cedar which miraculously bears fruit: its grandeur going beyond nature
and serving the purpose of nourishment, satisfying the hungry, and providing
room for every bird in its branches.
It’s a grand
hope of restoration for a downtrodden people.
One that trusts no misfortune is too great for God to reverse, one that
hopes not just for grandeur but for food and shelter for all. It’s a hope that formed Jesus’ imagination,
and that he re-presents to his disciples in this discourse, but with a
shift. He imagines (and so promises) a
time of universal provision of food and shelter, drawing on that image again of
there being room for all the birds of the air in its boughs. But, he doesn’t talk of cedars any more, but
bushes. Now, as bushes go, the mustard
bush is the largest in the Levant, but it’s still a bush, and bushes aren’t as
impressive as trees. Would anyone travel
to see the mighty red bushes of California?
But, Jesus eschews the cedar for the bush.
The kingdom
of God does not replicate the kind of greatness human nations build for
themselves. God did not send a might
muscular military Messiah, even though that was precisely what many were
looking for, longing for. He loved us
too much for that. So, he sent us a
suffering servant.
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