God Gives the Growth. Scatter the Seed.

Homily for 11^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
June 12-13, 2021
St. Lawrence, Mentor – Saturday 7:00 PM
Sacred Heart, EGF – Sunday 10:00 AM

Focus: God gives the growth.
Function: Scatter the seed.

Every year, Sacred Heart School has different dress up days. One of the days is Vocation Day. This year, as it happens every so often, a young boy dressed up as a priest. At the end of the day, I invited him and his mom to stop by my office. I gave him one of my collars. The real deal. His name was written on the back along with a note that read, “Jesus said, Come follow me.”

When they got to the car, his little sister wanted to look at it. He told her, “You can look at it, but be careful, I’m going to be needing that some day!”

I scattered a seed. Or, maybe I watered a seed that was already planted.

I don’t know what will come of it.

Maybe it will get lost.
Maybe it will end up tucked away in a special box.
Maybe he will find it someday, years from now.
He might throw it away when he is 16.
Then again, he might wear it on his ordination day.

I don’t know what God will do with that seed.
I don’t need to know.

All I need to do is scatter it.

God is the one to make it grow.

…

I would like to share with you some words entitled Prophets of a Future Not Our Own:[1]

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own:

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

…

This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it 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.

What if the man in the parable never scattered the seed?

[1] Bishop Ken Untener, “Prophets of a Future Not Our Own”, https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/prayers-and-devotions/prayers/prophets-of-a-future-not-our-own