Mk 4: 26-34
He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Parables about Growing
Compared to the mustard seed, Jesus said, “This is how it is with the Kingdom of God.” Why did Jesus tell so many parables about growing? Jesus was teaching about the slow growth of God’s reign, despite the loud voices around him that had a vision of “how it is” or “should be.” Theologian Gerhard Lohfink calls these parables a silent revelation by Jesus that growing things make no noise.
Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin writes: Each act of love, no matter how small or hidden, moves all reality close to unity and connection with Christ.
In a time when there are very loud voices, let us contribute greater faith, hope, and love of Christ’s presence in all of creation by every desire, word, and action. The created world labors as well so that the birds of the sky can dwell in the shade. This is how it is.
—Rita Dollard O’Malley is associate provincial assistant for Ignatian Spirituality for the Midwest Jesuits.
Prayer
Patient Trust
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ