Tuesday 27 October
Luke 13:18-21
‘Good things come in small parcels’, so the saying goes. This is an important idea in life, is it not? Today’s two parables stress the great results that can come from tiny beginnings. The small mustard seed becomes a shrub that may reach nine feet in height! A small lump of yeast helps the dough expand to several times its original size.
Jesus used these examples to give us insight into the kingdom of God. God’s kingdom cannot be adequately or thoroughly explained in human language but (thankfully) the world is full of signs which shed light on its ways. From these two parables we learn that we must expect the kingdom to come about in the smallest of happenings and often (in the world’s eyes) the most insignificant of people. Jesus displayed the power of the kingdom in the lives of small people – a crippled woman, a blind man – and he himself hailed from Nazareth, a tiny, obscure hamlet about which people said, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ (Well, clearly it can!!)
Dorothy Day, the great North American social reformer, once commented on how young people particularly can struggle with this idea: ‘Young people say: “What is the sense of our small effort?” They cannot see that they must lay one brick at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action at the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.’ This is God’s wisdom and God’s way.
God the Father knows when a small sparrow falls to the ground; Jesus noticed when a widow put her mite into the temple coffers. God sees the little things we do for him. The kingdom then is built up as we are faithful and obedient to the small and seemingly insignificant things in our lives: prayer, reading God’s Word, faithfully attending Mass and striving to overcome our weakness and sins with God’s grace and help.
‘Walk in the good, believe in God, don‘t try to acquire perfection by force, but do everything quietly and then you will be truly humble. God will give you everything.’
(St Paul of the Cross)
Romans 8:18-25 • Psalm 125(126)
Luke 13:18-21
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