Most kids don’t want to hear this but school starts exactly one month from today. The joy and ease of summer living without the responsibilities of homework, early rising, and keeping a schedule is coming to a swift close. Which also means that families will soon—if they haven’t already—-be going through the school supplies checklists. No matter how much you keep and save from year to year it always seems that somehow things disappear and you find yourself needing to re-purchase so much stuff you feel like you already should have. For you fellow disorganized people out there this may be more of a reoccurring theme than not—often wondering where things are or if you have everything you need for a task at hand. It helps to be able to improvise but the reality is it’s just not possible to be prepared for what can come our way at any given moment. Life is full of surprises and besides there’s just so much of life you just can’t be ready for— sure you can read about it, you can hear how other people might have
handled it, but when the ball is in our court it’s a different game. So how do we improvise with the Holy Spirit or what then is essential or key to making faith work? GK Chesterton a convert to Catholicism was with a group of dignitaries/men when the question was asked if you were stranded on an abandoned island what book would you want to have with you? One piped up “The complete works of Shakespeare” another nobleman said the Bible…finally all eyes were on Chesterton as he was to give his answer to this hypothetical situation: he said with great charm: “The Native’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding”.
In our Gospel, Jesus offers a hypothetical or rather a parable when he talks about the seed being sown. We know how it goes the seed is strewn everywhere from the rocks and thorns to finally the fertile ground and as our Lord explains the point of what He is trying to get across—he correlates the seed with His word being heard. This made me think how often have I’ve come to church, experienced His truth, been exposed to his goodness and it mainly has been a passive event with no lasting impact. I move from God to my next thing, I transition from the things of heaven to the way of the world like it’s no big deal. Jesus goes on to say that the seed bears fruit, the one that was sown in rich soil IS THE PERSON WHO HEARS THE WORD AND UNDERSTANDS IT to really know that what we do here what God offers us, who Jesus is—to really get that doesn’t just fit Church on a check list or a nice thing to have, but it becomes the one thing that we take with us everywhere.
The only way a seed can live or a plant can grow is if it has roots. To be rooted in our relationship with God means that we have actually prepared a place for Him—we’ve dug in—so that God doesn’t just file next to so other unconscious random part of my life that results from me not being intentional about my time or thought. My brothers and sisters may our roots sink deep as we grow in our understanding of the Lord—placing Him not merely as a sliver in the pie chart of my life, but that we see our faith in God as the practical guide to living life with purpose, to knowing who we are created to be and, as the one thing that truly prepares us for anything and everything.
