Homily: Tuesday, 30th Week in Ordinary Time - Year A

Readings: Rom 8:18:25; Ps 126; Lk 18:18-21

About 60 years ago, when I was a freshman at Georgetown, our theology course focused on Sacred Scripture. Our professor was an ancient Jesuit, probably in his sixties, who loved to tell stories. As we studied Jesus’ parables on the Kingdom, he told this brief parable of his own.

A man entered a garden shop and was surprised to see God behind the counter.

"You can have anything you want, free of charge!" God told him.

Surprised and thrilled, the man said, "Oh, I'd really like to be wealthy!" But from the expression on God's face, he realized he might have made a mistake; and so, he added, "and, of course, the same for all my neighbors."

But God still hesitated, so the man thought: perhaps I should have asked for something more spiritual.

"I'd also like peace and blessings on me and my family."

But God still did nothing.

"Ok," he blurted, "I'd like peace in the world! And an outbreak of love; yes, an epidemic of love from one end of the world to the other!"

With this, God shook His head and said, "You've come to the wrong shop. We have only seeds here."

Yes, God is in the seed business. He loves to give us little things that He will turn into very big things.

Of course, like Jesus, the good Jesuit father was trying to show us that God’s gifts demand a suitable response from us.

His gift of faith is handed to us in countless different ways, tiny seeds that He will fertilize and water if only we accept them, take them to heart, and give them room to grow.

Brothers and sisters, the Kingdom isn’t a place; it’s really a web of relationships, God’s people working together with Him to bring His love and His justice into the world. And it’s through Jesus Christ that God’s love, God’s power, breaks through into our lives. We need only accept Him, and accept the Gospel, that tiny seed, that small measure of yeast, and the result will be beyond our imagining.

Remember those words of Jesus as He began His public ministry? 

“The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel” [Mk 1:15].

Yes, dear friends, the Reign of God is here but it needs a response from us; it needs repentance and faith. Repentance, that metanoia, the call to undergo a complete change of mind and heart, a conversion, a willingness to turn away from self and turn to God. And faith – an acceptance of this wondrous gift that overcomes all fears. Let your faith smother those fears. How did St. Paul put it to the Romans, who had real reason to fear?

“…the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us” [Rom 8:18].

And it’s through us that God reveals His mercy, and His love to the world. Just as the yeast is inserted into the flour, we too must allow God to insert us into the world. We become infiltrators, or as Paul prefers to call us, “ambassadors for Christ” [2 Cor 5:20] – ambassadors of the Kingdom – allowing God to appeal through us.

That’s our job, as Christians, to expand the Kingdom, spreading God’s Word and God’s love in the little slice of His creation He’s given to each of us.

We need only visit His little garden shop, and He’ll give away the seeds – that’s the business He’s in.