1. Patience: These Are Only Seeds
2. While the Farmer Sleeps…
Introduction by the Celebrant
1. Patience: These Are Only Seeds
We live in a time that expects efficiency and immediate results. But a plant or a tree needs time to grow; and human relations cannot be built nor our problems solved overnight. People too need time to grow and change. Fortunately, God is patient with us. But we must become patient with one another and, with God’s help, give people and the Church and God’s Kingdom of justice and peace and love the time needed to grow. We can just sow the seed and then wait in hope. If it is a good seed we sow, it will certainly grow. Jesus assures us that it will sprout and bear fruit.
2. While the Farmer Sleeps
After carefully preparing the soil, what can the farmer do once he has sown the seed? He can do no more than hoe and pull the weeds, and then wait patiently till harvest time. Jesus planted the seeds of love and justice but the results remain poor. Yet we remain patient, as God stays patient, and we do not give up. The kingdom will flourish. In the meantime, each of us is a seed, with the power to grow. I have to become a tree and grow branches in which others can take shelter. With God’s help I must become a tree that cleans the suffocating air so that others can breathe and live. With Jesus we give thanks to God for his patience with us, and we ask for patience for ourselves.
First Reading: A Small Shoot Is Enough for God
From the small remnant of Israel, God will make himself a new people.
1 Reading Ezekiel 17:22-24
Thus says the Lord GOD:
I, too, will take from the crest of the cedar,
from its topmost branches tear off a tender shoot,
and plant it on a high and lofty mountain;
on the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it.
It shall put forth branches and bear fruit,
and become a majestic cedar.
Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it,
every winged thing in the shade of its boughs.
And all the trees of the field shall know
that I, the LORD,
bring low the high tree,
lift high the lowly tree,
wither up the green tree,
and make the withered tree bloom.
As I, the LORD, have spoken, so will I do.
Responsorial Psalm 92:2-3, 13-14, 15-16
R. (cf. 2a) Lord, it is good to give thanks to you.
It is good to give thanks to the LORD,
to sing praise to your name, Most High,
To proclaim your kindness at dawn
and your faithfulness throughout the night.
R. Lord, it is good to give thanks to you.
The just one shall flourish like the palm tree,
like a cedar of Lebanon shall he grow.
They that are planted in the house of the LORD
shall flourish in the courts of our God.
R. Lord, it is good to give thanks to you.
They shall bear fruit even in old age;
vigorous and sturdy shall they be,
Declaring how just is the LORD,
my rock, in whom there is no wrong.
R. Lord, it is good to give thanks to you.
Second Reading: We Trust in the Lord
In the tensions of a life lived in faith a Christian tries to live close to Christ and to prepare for the definitive encounter of the Lord.
2 Reading 2 Corinthians 5:6-10
Brothers and sisters:
We are always courageous,
although we know that while we are at home in the body
we are away from the Lord,
for we walk by faith, not by sight.
Yet we are courageous,
and we would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord.
Therefore, we aspire to please him,
whether we are at home or away.
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,
so that each may receive recompense,
according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The seed is the word of God, Christ is the sower.
All who come to him will live forever.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel: A Tiny Seed Becomes a Big Shrub
God is active, whatever the appearances. His word will bear fruit. Notwithstanding its humble beginnings, God’s kingdom will surpass all expectations.
Gospel Mark 4:26-34
Jesus said to the crowds:
“This is how it is with the kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and through it all the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.”
He said,
“To what shall we compare the kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
With many such parables
he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it.
Without parables he did not speak to them,
but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.
Commentary:
Whenever I meet this story of the sower and his seeds, my mind goes to cultivation of rice. And I use that popular plant, seed (commonest food of our daily menu) to reflect on this great theme of skill, labour and productivity. I once told my little niece that was playing with a plate of famous Nigerian jollof rice that if she knows what it takes to grow a grain of rice, she would accord greater respect to that food and the farmer.
In the novitiate, right inside the rice field, we learnt the various terminologies of this our basic food and when reflecting on Jesus’ parable, nostalgic emotions take over as the words come quick: harrowing (softening of soil), broadcasting (scattering, spreading of seeds), replanting, weeding, gathering, threshing, milling, parboiling etc. In-between these, the farmer struggles with birds, locusts, rats and snakes that come in search for the latter. There is also wild fire to contend with. The Gospel takes this process to make anyone who wants to be disciple of Jesus take the call serious. The expectation of Jesus is that all workers of evangelization be like a well-planted seed, purposed to produce, like the mustard seed, big shrubs that provide shelter for the faith community. How am I helping my faith in Christ and his Kingdom grow in my life and in the life of others?
Blessing
Patience, together with a sense of humble modesty,
is what we need in looking at our efforts
and the work of God among us.
Not that our efforts are useless,
but when we try to do God’s work
to make our world more God’s world
or his Kingdom, as we call it,
then we must always remember and respect
that God is the first agent in all this:
he plants, he gives growth,
he will do the harvesting.
But he expects us to cooperate with him.
May God bless you for this task:
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. R/ Amen.
Let us go in the peace of the Lord,
and may his hope sustain you.
R/ Thanks be to God.