Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil

July 22, 2023

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.22.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday.

* Last week, Jesus gave us the parable of the Sower, Seed and Soil, to indicate to us how he wants us to receive his Word and his work within us. We know from our basic knowledge of farming what normally occurs once a seed has been implanted in good soil. It starts to grow and eventually produces fruit and those fruit likewise contain within many seeds that can then be planted elsewhere. Spiritually the same thing is supposed to happen. With a hat-trick of different images in this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus describes that transition from a fertile disciple to a fruitful apostle in which we begin to share what we ourselves have received. His words contain three important lessons about how the kingdom of God grows. Insofar as each of us has been called and chosen by God through the Church to enter into and expand his kingdom, these three parables are deeply relevant to who we are and what God calls us to do. In one parable, Jesus tells us first that the Church, like a mustard seed, starts small but will grow to be huge. In a second, he adds that the members of the Church are meant to function in the world like yeast does in bread; we’re supposed to make everything rise. In the third, he states that the Church’s growth doesn’t happen in a vacuum: there is also “an enemy” in the field, sowing weeds, trying to wreck God’s harvest — in other words to destroy you, me and those we know and love. The three go together and are meant to guide us at every moment of the Church’s life.

* The first parable is that the Church begins like a tiny mustard seed. From the small seed of Christ implanted by God in Mary’s womb, to the calling of just a few disciples and apostles filled with the Holy Spirit, the Church was born and grew into the largest of shrubs, in which countless people throughout the ages, including whole nations, have been able to come and find shelter in her branches. That tree continues to live and we’re branches on Jesus the vine (Jn 15:5). The branches of the Church extend in areas of great sunshine and of great darkness, of nourishing rain and dessicating heat, with all of us taking our roots in that one event, that one piece of soil on Calvary, that one seed of Jesus who fell to the ground three times and died, but rose again, like a plant in springtime, giving life to all of us. This lesson of the mustard seed recurs throughout Church history. So many religious orders and apostolates that the Lord has raised up to help the Church began small, often with just one saint without little or no human resources, but over the course of sufferings and patience, they grew to be enormous. So many parishes began with just a handful of poor, committed families, but over the course of years and decades, with commitment, generosity, time and the help the Lord, grew to be quite large. Even if some of us are living in an area in which the Church is shrinking, the Lord wants to bring good out of it, so that we can all experience anew the full and exhilarating meaning of this parable, through beginning again, beginning smaller, like the new mustard seed planted from the tall tree. I’m recording this from Spain, a land of extraordinary saints, but in many parts of the country,