The Mustard Seed Chronicles

In St. Paul's letter today, he advises his listeners to "Aspire to please him."  Paul will go on to say that is because we walk by faith, not by sight.  I remember one of the lines from a Godspell  song, which states, "The seed is planted in the good soil in the ground, but it is fed and watered by God's almighty hand."  Like today's Gospel reading, we witness the miracles of God's grace and blessing, but we cannot fully appreciate the 'hows' and 'whys' of God's will or wisdom.  But the challenge for us is to become part of the story.

One of the commentaries I had read this week spoke about the faith and trust which Abraham and Sarah had.  At their time and place children and family were very much off of the radar.  Through Abraham's faithfulness a great deal of children were attributed to them, of a legacy which Abraham would never see.  Abraham believed that the message of God would be fulfilled because he had come to know God as a faithful God.

This is the story of so many of the prophets, and holy men and women throughout the generations.  Their 'Yes' to God was filled with struggle, hardships, and uncertainty - as well as overwhelming peace and joy.  As Thomas Merton once mused, we have no idea as to whether we are really doing God's will.  Yet these same folks are faithful to the larger picture, the image of the Kingdom of God.  Now there is a fatalistic temptation to simply be nice to others, and to go on as we please.  Life is short, so we need to be happy in this life, and hope for the best in the next.  But this leads to frustration because we can never fill up what is lacking.

But we are about sowing seeds.  We will no always see our live returned to us, or our compassion rewarded.  I remember a former high school student of mine who was a real brat, coming up to me as an adult, commenting that I was a 'cool' priest back in the day.  The real challenge is to continue to sow seeds of love, kindness and forgiveness.  We have to get over the idea that like the Brady Bunch, all of our dilemmas will be resolved in 26 minutes.

Being faithful can be most difficult in that we do not always see the results of our faithfulness.  We are always in process.  Bishop Doran, our now retired Bishop, used to have us read a tremendous amount for his marriage class.  Years later he had told me that he knew that sometime in life those assignments would come back to us, and would make sense in some situation.  So we strive to be the holy men and women we are called to be.  And with God's help we become the sign and symbol of holiness for generations to come.