A friend of mine is so picky that she buys only organic produce because she fears passing the toxins in our foods into any child she’ll bring to the world. Sounds like she’s in for a rude awakening, for the chemicals have infested nearly everything we consume. I was told by another friend who is a Microbiologist to be sure to wash my tomatoes and apples with soap before eating them because they’re full of chemicals that aren’t good for the body and, in fact, are carcinogenic. But, how much of the plants and animals of our day grow on their own as—Jesus suggesting in today’s gospel—the Heavenly Gardener intended them; having not been genetically altered or crossed or manipulated? Be that as it may, the farmer or the gene scientist remains a proofreader of the works of creation; he can observe them, enhance them, rearrange them, or even frustrate and hinder them; yet, he lacks knowledge of the secrets of life and of growth itself. He cannot create life from the scratch. For in vitro fertilization, he needs someone’s egg and another’s seed; and to make rose bushes with gold petals, he needs another’s rose bush. I challenge him to make his own egg or rose bush.
If this is so for the natural order, which God placed under our care, how much more would God preserve the mysteries of His kingdom and reign over us. In Jesus He has revealed the desires of His inscrutable wisdom. God works His mysteries slowly in us. Like the seed planted on the ground which slowly grows into a mighty tree, once the seed is sown in us—as in baptism—we become a soil where God’s reign can take place. We must then consciously nurture the seed (the word and graces of God); and knowing that the clock of nature ticks slowly, develop real patience to allow the seed permeate its roots of faith, hope, love and forbearance deep into the ground of our soul. Those who trust in Him and yield to the designs of His wisdom will grow into a majestic tree, flourish like the palm tree, and grow like the cedar of Lebanon (Psalm 92:13).
Jesus’ parable speaks of the Church as the kingdom of God, which like a mustard seed grows into a large bush putting forth large branches for birds of all kinds to shelter in its shade. This image presents the Church as a great empire in which peoples of all nations (Ezekiel 17:23), languages and ethnicity meet. A significant characteristic of the Catholic Church is its universality: depicting an abode for all God’s children—rich, poor, brown, black or white. In it you’ll find individuals very highly learned and those of very humble background, great saints and miserable sinners from any imaginable race and tongue. In the Church, God tears down the barriers made by man. While we lament the evils of our time, we can’t fail to acknowledge what the Church has overcome: we’ve nearly put behind us slave trade, child labor, and subjugation of women. The Church continues in our time to call out the imbalance between the over-privileged few and the miserable many, the injustice of a First World versus a Third World. The Church remains the abode for birds of all kinds, flocking to every branch, and providing adequate shelter for all God’s children.
We must understand, too, that a person can frustrate the word planted in his or her heart through neglect or impatience. St. Theresa of Avila warns that an untended garden becomes overgrown with weeds. Many a believer has been drawn to the enemy by over-reliance on worldly wisdom, which scripture says is foolishness before God. The enemy is all too ready to furnish spurious alternatives to destroy the seeds of faith planted in us. He seeks to poison the life of the Church with demagoguery meant to obfuscate and call into question the essential truths of the faith. In this enterprise, he finds recruits even from within the faith—wolves in sheep’s clothing—who team with worldly forces to hem believers to submit to worldly errors. St. Paul urges us to be courageous, always aspiring to please God, “for we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor5:7).
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo