Homily – July 27, 2009 – Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time - Monday

+ What an amazing statement we have just heard: God has chosen to reveal to us the secret mysteries of life and his reign that go all the way back to before the creation of anything at all. But he knew our limited mental capacity could not handle the astounding information point blank, in its raw form – and so he said: I will open my mouth in parables; [in this way] I will announce that has lain hidden from the foundation of the world. And this is what he did, by sending Jesus, to speak of such awesome mysteries, in parables.

The parables today, describing the Kingdom of God are two: the Kingdom is like a tiny, little mustard seed, that grows into the largest of plants: when it is properly cared for and nurtured. This relates how the Church, beginning with a tiny band of brothers in an upper room, who were later sent out to the whole world to offer the Light and Life of God himself, became and continues to become a living organism open enough and willing enough to warmly and lovingly embrace all who come to her sheltering and protective branches. The timing and details of the coming are left entirely up to the will of the Father: our duty is to keep the Church properly cared for and nurtured in its own life and purity so that it will be a worthy gathering place for all who desire to come to her.

The other parable proposed to the crowds today is this: the Kingdom is like yeast mixed into dough. Soon it permeates the whole dough and gives it its full, rich, robust composition in the baking process. God the Father is the baker, all he expects of us is to be like the yeast of the leaven so that the world can reach its full, rich, robust potential as it waits for the final baking process which will occur when Jesus comes again – and the Bread of his Life, us, loved, sweet smelling and now baked to perfection – will become his very glorified body to exist in him forever in heaven!

Those who choose other gods – as is demonstrated in the first reading today – will never experience what was just described above: a golden calf of any making can never offer us a gentle, warm, rhythmically beating, compassionate, merciful Divine Heart to nuzzle up against and into as it exists right near and surrounding our own restless and beating hearts!

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.