Turn. Love. Repeat.
Matthew 13:24-43 for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Inside each of us are seeds and weeds of sin.
However, God tells us, the Church tells us and our faith tells us that in baptism God with his own almighty hand and eternal Spirit has planted within each of us the seeds of righteousness, holiness and much more.
By baptism and the Holy Spirit, God has planted his own Son within us and has planted us in his Son.
God has planted deep within our being his own power, divinity, light, truth, life and glory.
Each of us is a field of God.
Each of us an offspring of our heavenly Father.
We may trust that God himself will dig and plant, water us and weed out the causes of sin, whether now or in a future purgation.
Here at Mass, at this moment, we are inside God’s house where right now God is busy at work.
The Greek word liturgy refers to WORK for PEOPLE.
Liturgy is God’s work for his people.
Here in the Eucharistic Liturgy, God is at work planting and gathering among his sons and daughters.
There is a hymn that speaks of this.
Its words come from parts of an ancient writing [the Didache] from less than one hundred years after the Son of God fell like a grain of wheat into the earth, died and then sprouted from the earth in his everlasting resurrection.
The hymn voices a rightful sense of hope and confidence that we dare to call our own, as well as a sense of thankfulness that can enliven our faith.
Father, we thank thee who hast planted
Thy holy Name within our hearts.
Knowledge and faith and life immortal
Jesus thy Son to us imparts.
Thou, Lord, didst make all for thy pleasure,
Didst give man food for all his days.
Giving in Christ the Bread eternal,
Thine is the power, be thine the praise.
Watch o’er thy Church, O Lord, in mercy,
Save it from evil, guard it still,
Perfect it in thy love, unite it,
Cleansed and conformed unto thy will.
As grain, once scattered on the hillsides,
Was in this broken bread made one,
So from all lands thy Church be gathered
Into thy kingdom by thy Son.
Turn. Love. Repeat.
Dear Readers of “Turn. Love. Repeat.”
California where I reside had a new law go into effect on January 1, 2020. California Assembly Bill 5 forbids freelance writers, editors and photographers from providing more than 34 content submissions to a media organization per year unless the organization hires the freelancer as a salaried employee. Patheos is a media organization, and I am a freelancer. So now I must limit my posts to 34 per year, or 1 post about every 10 days.
So as not to exceed my legal limit, between my postings here at Patheos I will publish my “extra” pieces at my personal blog, Monk Notes.
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