This time of year, with the high heat and today’s gospel, always brings me back to mowing lawns and doing yard work while growing up. As a kid, it was great working outside, taking care of neighbors’ lawns and shrubs, making money while appreciating the beauty of creation, and having a small role in making things look good in our neighborhood.
But not everyone’s yard was as pristine as the green of an elite golf course. And I learned that not only did grass need cutting but also that weeds that we called crabgrass flourished in the heat of the summer. The trick was not letting the weeds overtake the healthy grass.
Today’s gospel and first reading connected me to this landscaping battle.
Just like our minds, hearts, and souls need to be prepared to receive the Word of God, so too did the lawns need preparation in the spring and fall and then constant attention and action throughout the growing seasons of the spring and summer.
In life, we face all sorts of challenges to having good soil that allows God’s Word and Sacraments to work for the good in our lives. Every one of us has an Achilles heel or weakness. For example:
- For some, it’s fear of being let down, leading to not trusting in God’s way.
- For others, it’s an obsession or compulsion to excess in work, recreation, or relationships.
- Others struggle with an emotional or medical disease that dampens their ability to believe in a God who loves us.
The point is that everyone struggles in some way to cooperate with God’s grace and keep our hearts and minds open to receive what the Lord wants to plant in them. It’s not enough to receive God’s grace; we also need to cultivate a receptivity to it.
At times, this means doing what we’re doing right now … making a commitment to go to Mass. Deciding that we need to pray to God for forgiveness, listen to His Word, commemorate the Last Supper, and receive Holy Communion.
But even daily Mass goers have weeds that spring up. And then we need to take action as soon as possible, rooting them out by facing them and going to Confession to confess them, receive the spiritual medicine of penance, and the absolution of Jesus through the person of the priest and the grace of the Holy Spirit.
My brothers and sisters, as you take a look at your yard, garden, or even potted plant, remember the care needed for it to flourish, to give beauty, and remind us of our Creator, the One who speaks to us in this Mass and long after we leave this chapel today.
May God bless you and your family as we make time to cultivate hearts, minds, and souls so that they may be fertile ground for the plantings of God through His grace.
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