bulletin reflection - 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 12 July 2020

     It is hard to believe that we are now in the middle of July.  This time last summer, I was in the Basque country of northern Spain praying the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola. Little did I know that a year later, we would be in the middle of a pandemic and that our world would be turned upside down.  We don’t really know what our reality is going to be even in the short-term, do we?  What is school going to look like for our children and youth when classes are supposed to return in August?  What is our year of faith formation in our parish going to look like this fall for our children, our youth, and our adults?  We don’t really know the answers to these questions, do we? 
       I love the parable of the sower that we hear in our Gospel this weekend.  In fact, we are going to hear different parables from the Gospel of Matthew at our Sunday masses these next few weeks.  The word of God is received in different ways in our lives, like seeds that fall on rich soil or on rocks or on dry ground.  My sister Kimberley up in Boston sees the photos I send her of our beautiful sunflowers in front of our rectory, and she is very envious.  She loves sunflowers and tries to grow them up in Boston each summer, but somehow they just don’t grow as well up there as they do down here in Mississippi.  Our job as disciples of Christ is to provide fertile ground for the word of God in our lives, to welcome his word and to nurture it in our lives.  
      Perhaps we can relate to this parable of the sower and his seeds in the context of the pandemic we have been going through since March.  Here we are in the middle of the summer, facing a very harsh reality indeed.  We were unable to have public masses for more than two months.  We have had to find creative ways in order to practice our faith.  We have had to work very hard to provide fertile soil in our lives for the word of God and the values of our faith.  Yet, the pandemic is not going away anytime soon.  We are going to have to continue to be creative in the way we practice our faith, in the way we journey through our faith formation program, in the way we live out our faith and evangelize others in our words and our actions.  
       Blessings to all of you this week.  May the Holy Spirit continue to lead us and guide us during these challenging days.