Eleventh Sunday of Year B
(Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34)
St. Paul’s words in our second reading today:
WE ARE ALWAYS COURAGEOUS, although we know that while we are at home in the
body we are away from the Lord
remind me very much of Our Blessed Lord’s words recorded by St. John in his
Gospel:
These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the
world you will have tribulation; but BE OF GOOD CHEER, I have overcome the
world. (John 16:33)
Actually the two Greek words translated in the one case by ‘We are always
courageous’ and in the other by ‘be of good cheer’ are almost identical and
most closely related, so that we should interpret the words attributed to St.
Paul by the words of Our Blessed Lord … since very few indeed would be so
bumptious as to say of themselves that they were always courageous, for
not everyone can be courageous, and certainly none can guarantee such
behaviour. However, all can, and St.
Paul most certainly would -- with faith and trust in the Lord -- hope and
aspire to always ‘be of good cheer’ and ‘take courage’ in
whatever adverse situation they might find themselves, for St. Paul truly wants
to help us face up to what Jesus Himself explicitly tells us awaits all true believers
and faithful disciples:
In the world you will have tribulation.
And indeed, what tribulation there is in our world today! I do not intend to speak of wars and rumours
of wars; rather I want to highlight the tribulation in the hearts of so many
people -- all of them potentially good -- many of whom, however, are sadly
being turned aside from what is good by the turmoil around them seeping into
what should be the peaceful inner-temple of their being and making of it a den
of clamorous thieves.
In our modern world opinions are changing endlessly and seem, at times, to
be endowed with such great powers of attraction or momentum as to bring into
question, or even sweep aside, what had previously seemed incontestable,
immovable, and inviolable, with the result that many find it extremely
difficult to hold on to a constant, firm, and abiding faith.
Again, in our affluent society there is so much, regarded by the world as
truly desirable and worthwhile, apparently on offer, but for how long will such
things be available when change seems unforeseeable and irresistible? In such circumstances the temptation is
great, especially for the young, the needy, and those who are troubled, to
seize what is there and on offer before it disappears and is lost without their
having tasted it? In such a milieu, how
foreign and out of touch does a religion seem which would have us content
ourselves with what, ultimately, is only a promise or foretaste for our present
earthly appreciation and encouragement of the full satisfaction reserved for
our hoped-for heavenly being.
Again, when power and influence can be bought by money; when multitudes are
swept along by popular tides of enthusiasm stirred up by preachers of
vengeance, purveyors of pleasure, together with the debilitating influence of
an increasingly strident media; when rights are proclaimed and responsibilities
ignored; when might is right and popularity cannot be challenged; when the
would-be are cajoled into a pseudo-holiness without real faith or true commitment
or emboldened to display a brash and brassy faith without humility or fear;
when, to sum it up, we are surrounded by so many claims and contradictions, so
many false options and easy escapes, that many find it extremely difficult to
even imagine let alone recognize any supreme authority of enduring permanence
or significance for mankind’s salvation.
These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace; be of
good cheer, I have overcome the world.
The joy of peace, the hope of good cheer, the strength of confidence, these
are essentials for us today as perhaps never before.
Now our readings today can certainly help us with regard to such essential
and basic joy, hope, and confident strength, for St. Paul explains how we are
always confident: for the believer walks according to a sure faith, he is
confident through faith, that is, he trusts in the Lord and is well-pleased,
content, with the proofs the Lord has afforded us and the hope to which He
calls us: as St. Paul puts it, with the
prospect the Spirit offers us of one day becoming absent from the (earthly)
body and present (at home) with the Lord.
We, disciples of Jesus, being endowed with the gift of the Holy Spirit as
God’s gracious Gift and pledge of His continuing and abiding love:
Aspire to please Him (Who calls us by His Spirit).
Now, that Christian trust and contentment is pictured in Our Lord’s first
parable today:
The kingdom of God is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land, and
would sleep and rise night and day, and through it all the seed would sprout
and grow, he knows not how. Of its own
accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full
grain in the ear. And when the grain is
ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.
The sower does not know how the planting he has made develops to fruition:
it takes place whether he himself is waking or sleeping. Notice however, that before God he continues
to play his part precisely by waiting for the Lord and trusting in Him, before
being ultimately available and prepared to gather in the resultant harvest.
Jesus gave extra-special emphasis to contentment before God in His second
parable: no longer are many handfuls of seeds being scattered but just one
single mustard seed, the smallest seed of all.
The apparent insignificance of the beginning is no hindrance to the
final realization of God’s plan: that tiny seed can grow into “the biggest
shrub of them all”.
Ezekiel also has words for our guidance and comfort. He told us of the Lord’s dealings with
faithless Israel; she had broken the covenant made with God and had received
her punishment: banishment from the Promised Land. Only a remnant were left behind in the land
once known as Promised and they swore to obey their conquerors. What a fall from the proud kingdom of David
and Solomon! Nevertheless, with trust in
the Lord Who, as the Psalmist says:
Upholds all who fall and
raises up all who are bowed down, (Ps. 145:14)
there could have been a future for them.
But, in the event, there was no trust in the Lord: the remnant broke the
oath of obedience to their conquerors, just as the whole nation had, before
them, broken their covenant with the Lord Himself, and they turned to Egypt for
human help. They were not content with
the Lord’s provision, they wanted – with the help of Egypt – to win for
themselves something apparently bigger and better. It did not turn out as they had planned, and
the Lord spoke through Ezekiel the oracle we heard in the first reading:
Thus says the Lord GOD: "I, too, will take from the crest of cedar,
from its topmost branches tear off, a tender shoot, and place it on a high and
lofty mountain; on the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it. It shall put forth branches and bear fruit,
and become a majestic cedar. Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it; every
winged thing in the shade of its boughs.
And all the trees of the field shall know that I, the LORD, bring low
the high tree, lift high the lowly tree, wither up the green tree, and make the
withered tree bloom. As I, the LORD,
have spoken so will I do."
A beautiful prophecy concerning Our Lord, ‘a tender shoot’ from the crest
of the cedar (of Israel): Jesus, Son of Mary and of the House of David. He was planted on the Cross on the Hill of
Calvary just outside Jerusalem on the heights of Judah, and He subsequently
produced branches and became a splendid cedar as His disciples spread His Word abroad and
established His Church throughout the world, that Church in which you and I,
People of God, find shelter from the storms of sin and tribulation, and comfort
and hope for our souls.
All this was again reflected in the Responsorial Psalm (92:12) where we
heard:
The just one shall flourish like the palm tree, like a cedar in Lebanon
shall He grow.
Who are these just ones? The
Psalmist foresaw the disciples of Jesus, who, in the power of His Spirit would
be confident through faith, that is, trusting in their Lord and content,
well-pleased, with the hope set before them in the promises He had made to them
and which were already being fulfilled in them through the Spirit He had given
them; and from a distance of centuries he hails and greets them with these
words:
Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His
faithfulness. Delight yourself also in
the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in
Him, and He shall bring it to pass. He
shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the
noonday. Rest in the LORD, and wait
patiently for Him. (Ps 37:3-7)
The world hates you; but be of good cheer I have overcome the world.
How strange that we should be of good cheer though the world hates us! It is a fact that our sophisticated,
affluent, proud and self-sufficient, faith-rejecting Western world hates us and
the teachings of Jesus we both proudly profess and faithfully proclaim. And it is because of this modern-day hatred
that we should indeed be of good cheer because this hatred proves the truth of
Jesus’ words and encourages us to recognize that He has indeed overcome the
world.
People of God, pray with renewed insistence and solicitude for our world
where so many are suffering because they do not hear the truth, because they
are being fed with lies and given poison to drink, and let us give heart-felt
thanks to God that He has led us into the company of those called and empowered
to trust in the Lord at all times, and under all circumstances to be
well-pleased and supremely content with the hope His Spirit stirs up within us.
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