July 13, 2014
One of the things that always
strikes me as I read through the Gospels is how close a parallel there so
frequently is between the teaching of the Gospel and the most basic principles
of common sense emotional and mental health.
Just the simple fact that, emotionally at least,
each one of us lives in the world that we build for ourselves,
that ultimately no one can make us feel anyway at
all, not happy, not sad, not satisfied, not frustrated.
We are, each of us, ultimately, inescapably responsible
for the course of our own lives and the emotional flavor of those lives.
Today's Gospel reading is probably one of the
clearest instances of that message in all of Scripture.
The action of God, the spreading of the seed, was
of equal force in each case described.
The one thing that made the difference between
success or failure from place to place, or from person to person, was the openness,
the willingness of the one that received the seed, the Word.
That is a very simple message, really.
There is nothing, no system, no person, no thing,
that will remove the personal challenge of growth
and present us with satisfaction as a finished
product, all wrapped up and ready to enjoy.
Here are a few things that nobody packages, things
which demand a personal involvement in their own creative processes.
Morality.
No one can really teach morality to anyone else.
We can and must offer an understanding of the
difference between right and wrong in any number of situations.
But if that is ever to become something more than
simply a list of dos and don'ts, a fundamental goodness must be created and
nurtured in each individual.
A
sense of purpose.
There is no one who can convince any of us that
our individual lives are worthwhile, if we are unwilling to create that purpose
ourselves.
A
sense of identity.
It is almost fashionable to spend a lot of time
and energy agonizing over the question, "Who am I? Who is the real
me?"
There is only one answer to that, and it is the
same for everyone.
Who do you want to be?
We are what we do.
Faith.
Actually, a lot of things could fit in here.
It is easy for us to believe that it is the role
of the Church to provide us with faith, in about the same way a grocer provides
us with food.
Faith doesn't depend on the Church, or on it's
leaders, or it's practices, or anything else.
Faith depends on God's word being taken in to
one's life, taking root there.
As the Gospel says, the seed has been sown, and it
continues to be, every day of our lives.
There is no guarantee that it will grow.
But there is the promise that if we want it to, it
can.
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