Items filtered by date: Friday, 30 June 2017

Rain for These Roots
(Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23)
A parable is a comparison. It can be a short saying, or it can be, as in today’s Gospel, fairly long and detailed.
Jesus compares those who hear his word to seeds planted in a variety of soils. Isaiah compares God’s word to water. The two images dovetail perfectly, and remind me of 1 Corinthians 3:6, where St. Paul writes, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.”
We can discern also a sort of parable in our text from St. Paul. He contrasts suffering with the glory that is to come. We might see suffering as preparing the soil for planting, a tedious, painful process, recalling God’s word to Adam: “By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat.”
The Beautiful Lady of La Salette was addressing people who were no strangers to the “sweat of their face.” Theirs was a hard life; in 1846 they had little to show for it. They were staring famine in the face.
For the most part they would fit into the third group identified by Jesus, the seed sown among the thorns of worldly anxiety. Rain had a lot to do with the famine—too much when less was needed, too little when it was needed most, resulting in the loss of both staple crops, wheat and potatoes.
Mary wept genuinely over her people’s suffering, but did not hesitate to make the connection to their lack of faith. Could the failure of the earth to produce its fruits make them realize their own failure to produce the fruits of a Christian life?
Still, all of today’s readings are a source of hope. Jesus knows that there will be rich soil; Isaiah knows that God’s words will accomplish its purpose; Paul knows that glory awaits the faithful.
Fr. Michael Cox, M.S. wrote a book in 1956, with the title Rain for These Roots, about the significance of Mary’s apparitions at La Salette, Lourdes and Fatima. He drew the title from the last words of a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Lord of life, send my roots rain!”
We can easily make the comparison between rain and Our Lady’s tears. They are a parable without words.

Dominion
(Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: 2 Kings 4:8-16; Romans 6:3-11; Matthew 10: 37-42)
Did you notice how many times St. Paul refers to death in our second reading? I count about ten. He also mentions sin, twice. His point, however, is to talk about life, which he also mentions explicitly several times.
All these elements come together in the last sentence: “You too must think of yourselves as dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.“
The context is baptism, in which we died with Christ so as to live with him. Death no longer has dominion over him or us, and neither does sin.
That presumes that we are faithful to our baptismal commitments. Christians baptized as infants will be expected at some point to ratify for themselves the profession of faith made on their behalf.
But experience teaches that this fidelity cannot be presumed, that this ratification is by no means guaranteed. Thus the dominion of death and of sin comes to be reestablished.
Such was the situation that caused Mary to come to La Salette. She spoke some challenging words, but not so challenging as those we find in today’s Gospel. Jesus demands our absolute and total loyalty. We have to take up our cross. That is the cost of discipleship.
It ought not to surprise us that many people are unwilling to accept these demands—today, as in 1846 and in the ancient Greek and Roman and Asian world where the Gospel was first preached.
At La Salette, Our Lady shows regret at the situation into which her people have fallen, materially and spiritually; she cannot bear to see the dominion of sin and death in their lives. She weeps because they have lost respect for her Son and the things of God. Their baptism no longer means anything to them.
But she shows determination as well. She will not simply stand by and let them reap the consequences of their sins.
On her breast she shows us Christ crucified, to remind us that he who died for our sins did so in order that we might truly live. The cost of discipleship cannot compare to the price Jesus paid to save us.
Whose dominion will we choose: Christ’s or death’s?