Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, July 22, 2023

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: 

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, the Church is struggling. Earlier this week, after the celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel at the place where St. Teresa of Avila is buried, I met a relatively young couple at lunch — Victor and Margarida, the husband a member of the Spanish parliament, the wife a member of the European parliament — who have nine children. I spoke to them with gratitude for their generosity in raising up a large family for God and the wife explicitly referenced the parable of the mustard seed, saying, full of faithful realism, that the revival of the Church and civilization has to begin somewhere. Why can’t it begin, she asked, with one couple, with one family, that seeks to correspond with hope and courage to the vocation God gives them?
• The second image Jesus gives us today to describe the growth of his kingdom in the Church is that of yeast in dough. The dough is the whole world and we Christians are called to be the leaven. One Christian in a neighborhood, one truly Catholic family on a street, one faithful Catholic in a workplace or school should be enough over time to transform that neighborhood, street, school and workplace. The true Christian is the opposite of a “bad apple.” We know that one bad apple can quickly corrode a whole bushel. Christians are supposed to be the good apples. We are supposed to be the yeast that can make the whole world rise to God. Just think about the saints like Teresa of Avila, Teresa of Calcutta, Pio of Pietrelcina, John Paul, Francis, Dominic, Frances Cabrini and so many others, whose lives have changed those of almost everyone around them. God can and wants to give us the grace to have that impact in the circles we inhabit.
• But we need to grasp that this growth doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Jesus’ third parable concerns the fact that while the Lord wants this development to be occurring, there is an enemy trying to sabotage his plans. Jesus identifies the enemy as the devil. While the Lord is trying to sow good seed — who are “children of the kingdom” — the devil is sowing those who are beholden to him and to his lies, whom Jesus calls “the children of the evil one … who cause others to sin and do evil.” They are the anti-yeast, who rather than lifting everyone up toward God, drag people down, so that they live without faith or supernatural vision and behave morally sometimes like animals or proud devils. These weeds certainly exist in our world and the field of our culture is becoming increasingly populated with them, from those pushing the destruction of the unborn and the redefinition of marriage, family, and what it means to be a boy or a girl, to websites pushing pornography, to states selling pot, to politicians seeking to infringe on religious freedom, to celebrities promoting irresponsible, materialistic and hedonistic lifestyles. Some of these weeds are sadly even in the Church, featuring Catholics who are more attuned to the fallen spirit of the age than to the Holy Spirit.
• There are two lessons in this third parable. The first is that the good seed and bad seed exist together and grow up together. The weeds and the wheat Jesus refers to in the Middle East are indistinguishable during the early phases of growth. Not even expert farmers can tell the difference between them. When they grow enough to be distinguished, their roots are so intertwined that you can’t separate the weeds without ripping out the wheat by the roots as well. So you need to let them grow, take all of them out together and then separate them on sifting tables, lest the wheat be contaminated by the toxic fruit of the weeds. By this parable Jesus is saying that the same patience and prudence have to be exercised with the proclamation of the kingdom. We really can’t tell the difference between the good and bad seed, especially early in life. We can’t judge by present appearances. We need to wait until the end when Jesus himself will judge. Second, Jesus is telling us that we shouldn’t be surprised or overly discouraged when we find “bad seed” in the Church, those who, for example, live contrary to the Gospel. But Jesus teaches us also that while such weeds can provide frustration for the Christian farmer, rather than complaining about them, they ultimately can’t stop the growth of the wheat! He tells us that we need simply to keep focused on growing the good seed until harvest time, to keep living our faith with zeal until the end.
• At Mass this Sunday, Jesus wants to plant the seed of his word through our ears into our hearts, as well as to plant himself, the mustard seed, into our mouths and digestive tracks through Holy Communion. Jesus wouldn’t be calling us to this mission to be good seed, mustard trees and leaven unless he were prepared to give us everything we need to fulfill it. He gives us that “miracle gro” fertilizer at Mass, where he tells us anew, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear!”

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

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