Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)
Gospel Mark 4:26-34 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)
Jesus
said to the crowds: “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the
ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the
seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the
blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he
puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
And he said, “With what
can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It
is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the
smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and
becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that
the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
With many such parables he
spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He did not
speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples
he explained everything.
Below is what I posted six years ago and part of what I posted nine years ago for this Sunday. It is now (2021) 79 years since my parents married and 'the youngest born last month' is now aged nine. His father came through the medical procedure successfully, thank God.
The parables in this Sunday's gospel remind us that the faith has had many small beginnings. Perhaps the greatest is the Twelve Apostles.
As a Columban priest I'm very conscious of our history. Fr Edward Galvin from Ireland went off to China with Canadian Fr John Fraser in 1912. Fr Fraser went on to found the Scarboro Missionary Society in Canada and Fr Galvin, with Fr John Blowick, was to set up the Missionary Society of St Columban within a few years, both societies working to bring the Gospel to the people of China.
The Columbans, along with all other Christian missionaries, were eventually driven out of China after 1949 but have a presence there again, in a different way. And a year ago, as I wrote for last Sunday, the first two Chinese students came to Manila to prepare to be Columban missionary priests. Another small beginning in the service of the mission that Jesus gave to the Church. [Update: Those two students have since left but another, Peter Dong Lichun, was ordained to the priesthood in 2019 and is now serving in Korea. He is the first Chinese Columban priest.]
70 years ago my parents were married. Another small beginning in faith, a faith nourished, at least in part, by the Eucharistic Congress ten years earlier in their native Dublin. Without that beginning I would not be here.
Today, Friday, I visited a friend in Cebu City whom I hadn't seen in more than twelve years. When we last met she was single. Today I met her husband and their seven children, the youngest born last month. She and her husband have both lost their mothers in the last couple of months. Her husband will be going into hospital on Saturday for a procedure on one of his kidneys.The house they were living in before was burned down and they are now in a very small temporary house from which they will have to move soon. Yet I saw a house filled with love, the older children when they came home from school giving the mano po, the hand to the forehead, a sign of respect in the Philippines and in Timor Leste (East Timor), to their parents and to me - and then going to kiss their two youngest brothers. And we shared bread together, pandesal, small pieces of bread that are very popular for breakfast and for snacks.
The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.
We just don't know where the seed
will be scattered and where it will bear fruit. I once met a young woman from
Japan in Manila. She was moving towards the Catholic faith and the seed was
being nourished in the predominantly Catholic Philippines. But the seed of her
faith came to fruition in Thailand where she was baptised during an Easter Vigil. Thailand,
like Japan, is a country where only about one person in two hundred is a
Catholic.
May we be aware of the many 'seeds' that the Lord has scattered in our lives,
that he nourishes through the Eucharist and that he brings to fruition in the
most unexpected ways.
Sheaves
of WheatExtraordinary Form of the Mass
Traditional Latin Mass (TLM)
Third Sunday after Pentecost
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 6-13-2021 if necessary).
Epistle: 1 Peter 5:6-11. Gospel: Luke 15:1-10.
Authentic Beauty
Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond.
Pope Benedict XVI meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel, 21 November 2009.
And to stand
by your wife
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