Full-Grown

Full-Grown

Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

So also, I will allow the pride of Judah to rot, the great pride of Jerusalem. This wicked people who refuse to obey my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts, and follow strange gods to serve and adore them, shall be like this loincloth which is good for nothing. For, as close as the loincloth clings to a man's loins, so had I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the LORD; to be my people, my renown, my praise, my beauty. But they did not listen. Jeremiah 13:9-11

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds. "The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the 'birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.'" Matthew 13:31-32

Piety

In life, we play many roles.

Carrying our cross

Helping others carry their cross

Mocking those who carry their cross

Standing at the foot of the cross

Dying on the cross

Cursing from the cross

Blessing from the cross 
(From Maryknoll Missioners @MaryknollFrsBrs)

Study

What defines the mustard seed?  Simply being a seed is not enough.  The

farmer must plant the seed. The seed must grow.  It must feed others. It must create more mustard seeds.

What defines the Christian?  Simply walking into a church and dipping your fingers in Holy Water, making the sign of the Cross is not enough.  The Lord plants would-be Christians where the Word will grow in our minds, on our lips and in our hearts.  Then, Christians feed others with a fire in the heart that is ignited by the Gospel.  The Christian must create more Christians.

That is what the Lord was trying to do in the Hebrew Bible.  Don’t let today’s admonition in Jeremiah frighten you away.  Make it jolt you into change.  As we learn in the notes to the NABRE, “in this symbolic action, Jeremiah probably went to the village and spring of Parah, two and a half miles northeast of Anathoth, whose name closely resembled the Hebrew name of the river Euphrates (Perath), in order to dramatize the religious corruption of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians.” However, we hear the covenant expressed positively many times.

Now, if you obey me completely and keep my covenant, you will be my treasured possession among all peoples, though all the earth is mine. Exodus 19:5

And today the LORD has accepted your agreement: you will be a people specially his own, as he promised you, you will keep all his commandments,19and he will set you high in praise and renown and glory above all nations he has made, and you will be a people holy to the LORD, your God, as he promised. Deuteronomy 28:18-19

Action

Are you ready to be the Lord’s mustard seed?  Are you ready to be a full-grown Christian?

Let’s face facts.  The Trinity (Father, Son or Holy Spirit) could easily do everything needed in the world -- all the soul-saving, all the hungry feeding, all teh naked clothing, all the prisoner visiting. However, that would not build any relationship with us.  Nor would we have to build a relationship with each other. 

Christianity is the challenge of discipleship.  The Word challenges us to do something (three somethings to be precise). Yesterday, in the Sunday Gospel, a little boy with two loaves and five fishes accepted the challenge to act. Is today our turn?

Coincidentally, the Rule of St. Benedict is focused on work and prayer this week.  Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore, the community members should have specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading. (RB Chapter 48: The Daily Manual Labor)

Benedictine spirituality exacts something so much harder for our century than rigor. Benedictine spirituality demands balance. Immediately after Benedict talks about the human need to work, to fill our lives with something useful and creative and worthy of our concentration, he talks about Lectio, about holy reading and study. Then, in a world that depended on the rising and the setting of the sun to mark their days rather than on the artificial numbers on the face of a clock, Benedict shifts prayer, work and reading periods from season to season to allow for some of each and not too much of either as the days stretch or diminish from period to period. He wants prayer to be brief, work to be daily and study to be constant. (Sr. John Chittister, Insight for the Ages)

Piety (Prayer).  Study (Lectio).  Action (Work). If we want our mustard seeds to sprout, we need all three mixed in the holy fertilizer. After all, Jesus tells us that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, nothing will be impossible for us.