Friday in the Third Week of Ordinary Time, January 28, 2022

I’m about the same, very run down.  At least the pneumonia does not seem to be getting worse.  

Before offering the reflection on today’s Gospel reading, I want to look back  at the Gospel reading of a few days ago in which Jesus healed the man with the withered hand in the synagogue.  In his commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew on that Evangelist’s account of the same event, St. Jerome references a certain “Gospel of the Nazarenes”.  He quotes from it a passage in which the man with the withered hand told Jesus that he was a stone mason and he begged him to heal him, for he was ashamed to beg for food.  The only scraps of this so-called gospel that exist today are found in the form of a few quotes in the works of the Church Fathers.  Whatever this “gospel” was, it had to have been written by the year 200 AD at the latest because that is about when the earliest quote from it were made.  St. Jerome does not accept this document as a true Gospel, but he does quote from it here as providing certain historical information.  The effect is to show the opposition of the Pharisees to the Lord curing the afflicted man even more reprehensible.  I find things like this fascinating.

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 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.  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.

“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 the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how.”   It is as if the Lord meant to snub the theologians and philosophers of the world: a person need not know how the Kingdom of God spreads in order to do his part in spreading it.  Anyone can do this with a simple action.  A child can plant seeds and if not interfered with they will grow into full plants as surely as seeds planted by Aristotle or Plato.  The Lord strongly desires his Kingdom to sprout and grow and spread and causes this through the hands of anyone willing to lift them.  We think of the gesture required for scattering seed.  In ancient time and for most of human history it was the simplest kind of gesture, tossing seeds as one walked along a parcel of land.  As long as the seeds fall on the right kind soil at least some of them can be expected to sprout and grow.  Of course, the chances for this increase with a little knowledge and modern machinery — the richness of good teaching — but while this is helpful, it is not strictly necessary.  All of this to say that the Kingdom spreads through the example and prayers of Saint Agnes as well as through the writings and holiness of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose feast we celebrate today.

“Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.”  Or rather, seemingly of its own accord, for Almighty God directs the destiny of each seed and of each fruit.  He directs the words and actions of his farm-hands and he places the seed where it will do the most good.  The work is God’s.  Often-times it is the word overheard or the action seen from afar that make up the seed, and it is the work of God that it bears fruit whether we are aware of it or not.  And it may a long time for that seed to ferment within particular soil before it bursts forth.  This leaves no doubt as to whom the glory goes.

“And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.”  Just as God increases the faith in a person in his good time and for the good of that person, so he brings the person who has ripened into sanctity, into his storehouse, heaven.  The coming and going of life on this earth, the growth in faith, is all mystery to us even when we participate in it, but after all we are assured by the Lord Jesus that the purpose of our faith is not so that we might remain on earth forever: the saint is made for heaven, with earth only a temporary place where we grow into sanctity to the fullest extent possible so that each believer “becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”  The “birds of the sky” can be understood as those souls who have found no safe abode or solidity in their false religions and philosophies and take comfort in the mercy and kindness afforded them by God’s faithful.  We might think of Herod Agrippa here, who “feared John [the Baptist], knowing him to be a just and holy man: and kept him, and when he heard him, was much perplexed, but he heard him willingly” (Mark 6, 20).  

We pray Almighty God that we may always be at his disposal for his work so that whether sowers or reapers, we may rejoice together in his labor and in his reward (John 4, 36-39).