Sixteenth Sunday in Course 2023
Who in the universe is mightier than God? Right, that’s a silly question. God is the mightiest. But how does He show His power, beyond just keeping every atom and molecule in existence? God’s power is manifest in His justice, which is imprinted into our consciences. That knowledge of what is right and wrong is God’s gift to us, and, beyond that, His leniency toward us sinners should convince us of His power and our need to imitate Him by forgiving those who damage us. He is just, but He is kind; we must be both just and kind, because when we repent of sin, God forgives us readily. The psalm singer knew that three thousand years ago. For him, and for us, the Lord is good and forgiving, and abounding in kindness. So must all of us become.
Prayer is our means of communicating with God, of listening to Him and speaking, and of God listening to us and speaking. He speaks in the Scriptures, in the Church’s teaching, and on a personal level in our hearts. Our prayer must be fourfold: praise, thanksgiving, repentance and petition. But in our weakness, in our concern for our own life and of the life of our families, we spend way too much time asking God for things. Sometimes, it seems, we don’t know what else to do. We know if we have a desperate need, like for rain, we knock on His door so much that we convince ourselves we are being rude. In times like that, we know we should thank God but we just don’t feel grateful. In that state, perhaps the best thing we should do is turn our minds and hearts over to the Holy Spirit and let our need for God spill out in a good old-fashioned groan. God looks into our own spiritual being and knows what we are saying, even if we do not. Remember that He is always closer to us than we are to ourselves.
This is the month Jesus’s parables are all about sowing seeds, the Word of God, and nurturing them. And when we look around at the many plants in our parish, even in our homes, sometimes we see wheat and other times we see weeds. Sometimes I am acting like a weed, so we all know how it goes. Frankly, when we see that and don’t know why some people act very unlike Jesus and Mary, especially ourselves, we might just take some time and groan. While we do, ask God to do in our lives whatever He wills, and the same in the lives of everyone we know. And be alert to them needing us to help them learn the ways of the wheat, the life of Christ’s disciple.
