15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Sunday 16th July 2017)
Walking in your own garden – (Matthew 13:1-23)
When I was studying for the priesthood there was an old priest who always encouraged me to walk in the garden of my own interiority. He wanted me to become aware of what was really going on in my heart and not just to live on the level of activities and outside entertainments. He said to develop my spiritual life I had to learn to live in the inside. He was concerned that in the modern world so much of our lives can be spent living on the outside, being worried about one’s possessions, what other people think of you, concerned about how you look. He said that so much of modern life is lived on this superficial level Just look at our advertisement industry! Christ asks us to live at a deep level of our own lives; he wants us to be conscious of who we are in ourselves in his presence.
This Sunday’s Gospel invites us to walk around our own interior garden, what is really going on in my life. Where are the good patches of your life that Christ is part of and brings much spiritual good and the fruit of Christian living? But also be aware of those areas in your life where the worries and cares of this life take away any real presence of Jesus. Are their relationships in your life where Christ is not welcome? Where are the parts of your life where you struggle very much with temptation? We will only discover these areas if we walk around the garden of our interior live and see them.
But when we look at these areas with Jesus then there is hope. At times we can become aware of rocky areas in our lives, and we can feel useless or powerless. But when Jesus is the gardener, then he can, through grace, cause all areas of our lives to flourish. Walk with Jesus around the interior garden of your life and see how together you can cause your interior garden to blossom, now a hundred-fold, now sixty, now thirty.