Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, 6/13

Do any of you enjoy going into nature? I do, and you’re all invited to join our “Parish Hiking group” that goes out every Saturday to the Wissahickon and other trails around Philly. I love encountering nature, and somehow it seems to renew me from the long work week. In this Sunday’s 1st reading and Gospel, God seems to be inviting us into his mystery through nature as well.

In the 1st reading from Ezekiel, we read: “Thus says the Lord God: I will take from the cedar’s branches and plant it on a lofty mountain. It will bear fruit and become a majestic cedar and every bird will dwell beneath it.”

In the Gospel, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a man who “scatters seed on the land, which would sprout and grow,” though he know not how. Or to a mustard seed, which is the smallest on the earth, but that “springs up and becomes the largest of plants.”

We can observe these phenomena in nature, and if we take time to reflect, we can perceive how it is God at work in everything. When we have visited the highlands of Peru, I have noticed that as the people live off of the land, they are very in touch with these realities and seem to have a more “natural” opening to God. They turn quite easily to him as they depend on the rain and the sun for their crops to grow.

Why might Jesus use these images to describe the Kingdom of God? It’s as though the work we all do in sharing the Gospel with others, evangelization, is a sort of “scattering of the seed.” We like those who live off the land should understand that ultimately the work is of God, and we are called to collaborate with him. We’re called to “cultivate the land” of our own hearts first so that the Word of God can reach good soil and bear much fruit.

Being in nature with God and being attentive to his work in our own hearts can lead us to a grateful spirit, as we find in the Psalm: “Lord, it is good to give thanks to you!”

Patrick Travers, SCV