Gospel Reflection of 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Sunday 17th June 2018

In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, we hear Jesus talking about the Kingdom of God.  At first glance, when we see the word ‘Kingdom’, we may think of power, leaders, or influence in this world.  However, Jesus describes His Kingdom as a ‘mustard seed’.  This is a tiny, tiny seed and this would be most surprising to us if we were the Apostles or disciples hearing this.  Jesus has been gathering disciples and gathering followers.  This movement seems to be growing and taking off, so why would Jesus describe the Kingdom as a mustard seed?  Well there is something that just happened in the previous chapter of Mark’s Gospel chapter 3.  In Chapter 3 of Mark’s Gospel, we read about how some of the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees are starting to take counsel with other Jewish leaders on how to destroy Jesus.  So there is already a resistance movement to the Kingdom that Jesus is building.  And we will see that many of the people who follow Jesus for his eloquent preaching and the many miracles that He performs are going to start turning away from Him.

Jesus is reminding His disciples that it is not always about the numbers.  The Kingdom is going to be a small mustard seed, and if it is a small and faithful group of people, it will grow and transform the world.  That is a very important message for us today because sometimes we can look out upon the world and feel discouraged when we see how society no longer has a good understanding of family life, how society is struggling in its definition of marriage in our culture, how we live in a culture of death that promotes abortion, etc.  There is a lot of people who do not believe in Jesus, a lot of people who do not believe in the Church, and so we can become easily discouraged.  But there is something beautiful that Pope Benedict XVI said.  He said that we today are living in the era in which the church must once again be the mustard seed, like in the time of Jesus, like in the time of the early Church, where there was this small movement in this larger empire of Rome, a pagan empire.  We are called to be like this small little movement of faithful people that bore witness to the Gospel and through their love and faithfulness, they went out and began to spread and multiply.  Then over several generations suddenly we see that this pagan empire was transformed by Christianity.  But it did not all happen at once.  It began with a small group of people that were very faithful and chose to live a different kind of life than what pagan Rome was offering.  They were committed to that.  When people saw their joy, their forgiveness, how they cared for the poor and helped the sick, their love for one another, the people of Rome had never seen this type of love but were attracted to it.  Eventually this movement multiplied so much that it becomes the dominant force in the culture.

Pope Benedict XVI said that we are living in similar times.  We are living in a post-Christian world now.  It is a world that has heard of Christianity but that does not really know what the Gospel is all about.  It has turned away from Jesus and is a secular environment.  Once again, the Church needs to be a mustard seed.  Before Pope Benedict XVI was elected Pope, he was known as Cardinal Ratzinger.  As a Cardinal, he wrote about how the church is going to continue to get smaller in many ways.  We may not, in time, have the big church structures and diocesan offices and parish staff’s and even the numbers of Christians may continue to decrease, but Cardinal Ratzinger stated that we are not to let this to discourage us because the ones that remain faithful in a very secular, materialistic and relativistic world, the ones that remain in the Church are going to be intentional Catholics.  These are going to be what Pope Benedict XVI called the ‘convinced minorities’.  Yes the Church may be a minority group in the Church of the future, yet this Church is going to be filled with people of great fervour, of great faith.  It might be smaller but it is going to be stronger.  Why?  Because it is the Church of the mustard seed!  It is a Church that is small, but it is deep because if you really choose to be a faithful Catholic today, you are going to stand out.  You are not just going to randomly fall into that position and go through the motions of your faith, but you are choosing to do so.

So if you are one of those today in the mustard seed or one of the ‘convinced minorites’ that Pope Benedict XVI talks about, I want you to be encouraged.  And in order to put this into practice this week, take time to look around you and see how do you notice the mustard seed of the small group having a positive impact in the world today?  Yes, the Church may not be as respected as it was in times past, but it still is a powerful force in the world and it is going to continue to grow in that if we are faithful.  So look around you and give thanks to God for the small things you see Him doing.  It may be in friends or family members or in the culture around you where you are beginning to see signs of renewal.