We are back in Ordinary Time this Sunday after having many weeks of Lent and
the Easter season, of the solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity and the Body and
Blood of Christ. In fact, the last time we had a Sunday in Ordinary Time was way back in
February in the middle of winter. Today, in the middle of our summer months, in the midst of our farmers trying
to grow their crops and many of our parishioner trying to grow their gardens
with all the rain we’ve been having, its appropriate that we hear Jesus
teaching us about the Kingdom of God through parables about seeds. In particular, it is the parable of the
mustard seed that intrigues me today. Jesus spoke in parable in our to help us to better understand the Kingdom of
God. The parable of the mustard seed and these other parables are meant to shed
light on the new reality we are to live out when we are called to a life of discipleship
and when we begin to cooperate with God’s grace in our lives.
Grace – that is an interesting concept, isn’t it? I will have to admit that perhaps we don’t hear about grace enough at mass or
in our preaching. Grace is the presence of God in our lives. Grace is our participation in the life of God – in the life of the Holy
Trinity. Grace is a supernatural gift that God gives to us, a gift that comes out of his
goodness and benevolence, a gift that he bestows upon us for our eternal
salvation. Grace is given to us freely. But we have to respond to that grace in order for it to bear fruit in our life. We have the potential to respond to grace, just as the mustard seed had
potential to grow into this amazing and wonderful plant. Think of how we can validly receive a sacrament, such as receiving the Holy Eucharist
when we come to mass. But there is a difference between validly receiving a sacrament and fruitfully
receiving the sacramental graces that this sacrament offers us. We cannot be passive in our faith, just as we cannot be passive in receiving a
sacrament. We receive God’s grace in the sacraments and in our lives through our personal
faith, through our expectancy, through the hunger and thirst we have for God in
our lives.
But the grace we are talking about is costly grace, to quote the words of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the renowned German theologian who was put to death by the
Nazis in WWII. Jesus didn’t die for us and bring us salvation so we could stay trapped in a
cycle of sin. He died for us so that we could be transformed and receive new life. If Jesus just had pity on us and did not challenge us to rise from our sins, to
be transformed into a new creation, then his death would have been in vain. Then the grace that Jesus offers would be cheap grace. It would be the kind of grace that does not mean anything to us because it does
not require anything from us in return. God’s grace calls us to holiness.
It calls us to transformation, renewal, and conversion. We all know that there are certain behaviors and lifestyles that our world
deems to be acceptable and even praiseworthy. But through the lens of our faith, those behaviors and lifestyles are not part
of the kingdom of God. That is why Paul boldly asserts today that we
walk by faith, not by sight, because the ways of the world can lead us astray
sometimes and keep us from repentance and conversion. If we don't walk in the light of our faith, if we don’t interact with the
graces we receive from God, then we remain children of the world, not children
of the light of Christ.
I had a visit from a good friend of mine earlier in the week – Father Matthew
Flattley from the Diocese of Jefferson City in Missouri. What a joy Father Matthew brings to the priesthood. I remember sitting around the lunch table with Matthew at Sacred Heart School
of Theology in Hales Corners, Wisconsin when we were seminarians together,
talking about the call to have a spirituality or a charism as a diocesan
priest. You see, if you enter a religious order as a priest and become a Dominican or a
Franciscan or a Jesuit, that religious order has a certain charism or flavor in
which the priest is formed. But we diocesan priests have a lot more personal responsibility in choosing the
particular spiritual charism we are going to follow in our ministry and
priesthood. All of us – ordained clergy and lay persons alike, are called to consciously
choose the way we are formed in the faith, the way we practice our faith, and
to do more than the bare minimum, to do more than what is easy or comfortable.
I have mentioned before that I really enjoy this daily devotional publication called
Give Us This Day published by the Liturgical Press in Collegeville,
Minnesota. One of the features I like is “Blessed Among Us,” which is a short reflect on
saint or a person who has lived out his faith in a meaningful way. I think that the secular world mistakenly views a saint as a perfect person
with few flaws and faults. For us Catholics, saint include those people of faith who rose above their
struggles in life, who met life in their reality and tried to infuse that
reality with faith, who stand as examples of faith for all of us. The Blessed Among Us for Tuesday was an Irishman named Matt Talbot. Matt Talbot was not a priest or a ground-breaking theologian, or a powerful
leader of society. He was a laborer who struggled to make a living, who had almost no formal
education, who was an alcoholic since he was a teen. Yet, at the age of 28, he had enough of his miserable existence, he walked into
a church, committing himself to a path of conversion and change in his
life. He took a pledge not to drink anymore. Nonetheless, he struggled mightily for
the first year, at one point collapsing on the steps of a church, not knowing
if he could go another step in life. But daily mass and a devotion to prayer and penance kept him on the right path. He even tried to make amends to the people he had harmed or to those from whom
he borrowed money to buy drink. We think of the many who struggle in our society with addictions of many kinds.
Cheap grace would excuse those addictions and not challenge us to break out of
that cycle. Cheap grace would let us
take the easy way out. But the life of Matt Talbot, an Irishman who died in 1925 and who was named
Venerable by Pope Paul VI and who possibly will be canonized one day, is a
witness of faith for all of us. Grace is costly, not cheap. It demands
something for us. It demands sacrifice
and commitment and faith. Finding a way
to respond to grace in our lives is a way for us to let that little mustard
seed of faith grow and develop in our lives and to bear fruit. And remember this – Love God. Love your
neighbor. Be a disciple. Make disciples.
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