Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds, saying:
“The kingdom of heaven may be likened
to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
Matthew 12:24-43
“I love watching things grow.” If that disposition is typical of gardeners, no wonder God is portrayed in the first pages of the Bible as creating a garden, and who then goes on to provide and maintain vineyards, olive groves and fig-trees along with verdant pastures for grazing. As we hear in the Book of Wisdom today, there is no god, other than you, who cares for everything. What encouraging words, words that give us a real insight into the very nature of God!
Jesus too promotes this same wonderful image of God as universally caring. In our Gospel, the first impulse of the servants’ (excitable mere humans) is to tear the darnel out from amongst the wheat. But the master won’t have it, No, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow till the harvest.
No-one wanted darnel in their crops because it was a poisonous weed. Our landowner in fact had been very careful to obtain only good seed. It was his enemy who came in the dark of night and sowed the darnel among the wheat. Botanically, darnel and wheat are related and therefore the two are very similar in appearance – until they mature.
...each of us is a mixture of both wheat and darnel. In other words, we can ever so easily subvert and endanger all the great care and goodness the Master has put into our growth. However, even more importantly, we must never lose sight of the confidence God still has in us as his handiwork, as people created in his very own image and likenss. There is something of God in absolutely each and every one of us, and its always there at work prompting us to yet more growth and fruitfulness even when its little more than the size of the smallest mustard seed! So, trust in God’s work and grace, and never rely simply on your own innate sense of how spiritually weak, or strong, you are!
To conclude, here is a prayer written by a young woman only sixteen years old expressing a wisdom and faith well beyond her years.
“Father, help me to know myself, what I am and what I can become. Enable me to see the good in myself and rejoice in it, to see flaws and change them. Teach me to live with myself and to accept myself. Remind me that becoming what you want me to be is more like cultivating a garden than chopping down a great forest.”
Excerpts from the homily given by Father David Kennerley sm at St Gerard's Church on 17th July 2011.
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