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A collection of homilies and liturgies from St Patrick Catholic Community in Scottsdale, Arizona. We are Christian disciples in mission.
Welcome to Saint Patrick Catholic Community Podcast. We're glad you're with us.
Speaker 2:I wanna be upfront. I am not a farmer or a gardener. I live with someone who is. Father Tom grew up in a farm. Almost almost every morning, goes out and does something with the with the flowers, the plants, and the trees.
Speaker 2:Always doing something. If I was in charge, it would be a desert. Everything would be dead. I I I mean, I'm I grew up in a city. We had no gardens.
Speaker 2:Matter of fact, my mother and father, my mother especially, would get all the fruits either frozen or in a can. We never had fresh stuff. And so, for me to understand everything about farming and gardening, I don't have that good understanding, but I listened to my brother, father Tom. I listened to the scholars about farming, especially the time of Jesus. And so when Jesus tells this parable, the people at that time knew what he was talking about.
Speaker 2:Here he is. He's he's at the edge of the seashore, and he's in a boat. He's looking around all these people. He's looking a little further, and he can see farmland. He can see the farmland, and then they're sowing the seeds in the farmland.
Speaker 2:He goes, oh, this is a great idea to talk about to share a parable. Now, a parable is always about a kingdom or who God is, and a parable is a human story, so he's seen this human experience, but with a twist to get a point across about the kingdom or about God. So here he begins. Saul went out to sow. That's the easiest part people understand completely.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That makes sense. But then he sowed everywhere on the on the path, on the rocky ground, and the thorns, and then also some rich soil. Well, that's the twist because no gardener or farmer would do that. That's waste of the seeds.
Speaker 2:You don't have that much money to do do all the seeds, so you can't be a little more specific. That's the point of the whole story. When Jesus says that twist in the story, this is not about how to farm. It's about who God is. God is so generous to us.
Speaker 2:Even when we're not even ready for it, God's showering his his word among us, his grace among us, his love among us. That's what God is. God can't do anything else but that. And that's the good news for us because sometimes we're not ready for it. Sometimes we hear this word, we hear this passage or the parable, we're thinking, oh, those people, you know, those people who are hard in heart, those people on rocky ground, those people who are thorny, we can tell people who they are.
Speaker 2:But really, it's not about people. It's about all our hearts, how we're open or not to the word of God at some times in our life. Sometimes our hearts are hardened. Sometimes, not all the time, sometimes our heart hardened We get go go so got caught up in our own thing, our own world that we're not really paying attention to how to live the gospel. I remember having a conversation with my nephew, and I said, you know, he's Catholics.
Speaker 2:He's Cath he's Catholic supposedly. And I said, he we're talking about pro life, you know, I'm pro life. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's pro life.
Speaker 2:So that means we're also, as pro life people, we're not for the death penalty. Oh, wait. Woah. Woah. No.
Speaker 2:No. No. If they hurt me, I hurt them back. So that's very human experience. Someone hurts you, you hurt them back.
Speaker 2:That's very human. It's not the gospel. So I don't understand the gospel, but it challenged me. They'll say, no. No.
Speaker 2:No. No. I I will only follow the gospel when it grieves with my ideas of what life should be like. And then that's that's when our heart becomes hardened. We want things the way our our life is being done.
Speaker 2:And so we criticize people, we make fun of people, we don't forgive people, all because it's all about just living my life. Yeah. I suppose I'm Catholic. Oh, yeah. I I you know, I believe in God, but I do my life.
Speaker 2:And sometimes, even I do that. I'm more concerned about me and what I want. But sometimes, still, God's gonna shower his love, his word among us, even when we're on rocky ground. And that's the times we we love God. Right?
Speaker 2:We we come to church. We're here today. Come to church. And we if we think that this is awesome, God loves me, this is awesome. But when things get tough, when our world is rocked apart, you forget that.
Speaker 2:Where is God? Why didn't you help me, God? Why did you abandon me, God? All these good questions that we have, they're they're good questions. But all of a sudden, we stop praying.
Speaker 2:We stop even coming to church. Those are sometimes I know people who I haven't seen, they come for confession, and they haven't made a confession or church for many, many years because something happened in their life. But now they're back. Sometimes we're like that. I I don't wanna tie a good friend of mine, his her her husband died.
Speaker 2:She stopped going to church. She was at church her and her husband went to church every day, every day. But she couldn't go because if I go to church, I'm gonna cry. I said, well, cry? What's wrong with crying?
Speaker 2:She was so embarrassed by everyone else. So I was like, God, take care of me somewhere else. I I don't wanna even think about God right now. And that's a human experience. That's okay.
Speaker 2:But even in that even that that moment of our hearts are rocky, God is still share showering his love, his word, his compassion among us. And even when we go in that thorny life, our hearts are really thorny, which means it's it's it's I want so much. You know, I I I want to have everything good and everything better and and more of it. Now we put our faith to the side, and the beginning is really to choke us When our first priority is not God, not living the gospel, our first priority is getting what I want, getting what I want in my life. And there are times I want things in my life.
Speaker 2:I remember as a vocation director with my community, I mean, as a recruiter, and some people, yeah, I think I'm called to be a priest. This is wonderful. But they never did it because, oh, I'm gonna first get a job, and then I'm gonna go to here, I'm go travel over here. So, okay, you really don't want to do this. And that's okay.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we just don't want to do it, and our faith is being choked. But God's still showing his love, his word, his compassion among us. He wants us to see that our hearts are more like the rich soil. Hopefully, most most often, heart is rich soil, which means we we now we listen to the word of God. It may may make a part of our life, and I'm more compassionate even when I don't
Speaker 1:want to be. I want to be
Speaker 2:more forgiving even though I don't want to be because this is part of my life. My my heart is more rich in doing what Christ wants me to do. Those are experiences, I think, of God showering his love upon us. And that's what the first reading is about when the prophet is saying, you know, God sends the rain and the snow among us, his word among us, and we will not come back to God with nothing. In other words, God is going keep doing that.
Speaker 2:God is going always do that, and we will see something abundantly happen. It's hard at times when I feel hopeless to know that God's still showering his love upon me. Just trusting that when I don't feel God, when I'm anxious, when I feel really like I can't go on, God is still showering his love upon me. And it won't end. It won't, like, okay, I won't I may not see it happening, but it's happening.
Speaker 2:And I say that because I have a brother who's an atheist, and he a loving man, and that's why I always say he doesn't he doesn't see God at all, but I see God working in his life. So he may not see it. I may not see some things, but I see now that my brother, my brother Jay, that God is working in him, is bearing fruit even though he doesn't see it. So sometimes our eyes are blind, we don't see it, but God is at work. God is doing good things.
Speaker 2:And his only daughter married a Catholic and became Catholic. God is doing wonderful things. But sometimes also and I really believe that God is sowing or or casting out his seeds of forgiveness even when we are always going away from God. Like, I wanna follow God, but I sin this way. I wanna follow God, but I go this way.
Speaker 2:God's saying, I still forgive you. I still offer you my forgiveness. He's still scattering his seed of forgiveness to us. Or the times when we feel like, I just wanna I I just don't wanna follow the Lord today. Well, I don't wanna follow the Lord because it's it's really difficult.
Speaker 2:God is still calling us to him. God doesn't stop saying, okay, I'll stop talking to you. I'll stop being with you. God never stops that. Even though we may turn away, God's always there.
Speaker 2:Like the prodigal son's father, who welcomes him whenever he's waiting, God's always there seeking us out. So the good news is God is doing this. God is at work still when we're not. There's one point that we talked about the rich soil. And how do you get rich soil?
Speaker 2:Now, again, I'm not a farmer, but I do know some things, that if you're going have rich soil, going to plant something, you have to go and break up the ground, take out the rocks, pull the weeds, so it's all ready to go for the seeds. Same thing with us. For us to have rich soil, it begins with praying. Open our hearts to God, praying to God. God can work in our lives, that softens our soil, it breaks it up so we could hear God in our life.
Speaker 2:Just praying. But I think also, it's something we're doing today, gathering for the sacraments. In Eucharist, we are nourished to live the word of God. That helps our soil become rich. Even the sacrament of of reconciliation helps break the bonds of sin so we can become rich in God's mercy.
Speaker 2:Same thing. I think another thing about how to help make it rich is just offering to help someone out. Just help someone out. Rather than thinking about myself or thinking, what's in that for me, just help someone who needs help, to be concerned for those who are really struggling. Maybe it's our neighbor, maybe it's someone we see every time we come into church and wondering how is he or she doing.
Speaker 2:Reaching out, that softens our heart, so we can become rich, and we can good fruit. This whole year has been the theme of, Lord, teach teach me to pray. I think one of the best things that we can do is to spend time with God in quiet and listen. Hardest thing we can do though, we always want to go do something. We always have the radio on or have this on doing something.
Speaker 2:I think to really break open our hearts, pick up rich soil, is to listen to God. Be quiet and listen. The good news of all this is God is showering his mercy, his word, his love among us. He's not stopping. The challenge for us, open our hearts through prayer, through the sacraments, through outreach and service, through listening to God in quiet.
Speaker 2:And we'll be surprised how we'll bear much fruit. Oh, I did myself in person. There's one person I met recently who was dying, and family asked her to visit him. I said, sure, I'll come visit him. So I visited him, and before I visited him, his son said to me, okay, father, he doesn't go to church.
Speaker 2:And I've talked to him about, you know, let me go to confession and, you know, come come back to Christ. First of all, he's not Catholic. He's Lutheran. That's okay. And I said, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, that's good to know. So I went to go visit him, You know, and and, you know, he sees me, and he knows his son asked me to come, so he's expecting me. I remember I this is Garb, don't want to scare him too much. Here he am. And he starts talking to me, I didn't really say much, how was raised Lutheran, and this left the faith.
Speaker 2:Had a family, raised the family. They all became Catholic. And I said, well, are you ready? Are you ready? You're in hospice care, you're dying.
Speaker 2:Are you ready? Father, I think I am. I said, are you at peace? I think I am. Do you do you understand how how God's there for you?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, but I'm trusting. I'm not sure if there is a God. He's been very honest with me. I thought to myself, God believes in you. God is showering his mercy upon you.
Speaker 2:God is gonna help you in this time and you will bear fruit. You're already bearing fruit with all these children and grandchildren who happen to be living their faith in Christ. It's the challenge. Open our hearts. Even when we turn away, God is there,
Speaker 1:and God will not let what what he gives to
Speaker 2:us go to waste. It will bear much fruit.
Speaker 1:This has been a Saint Patrick Catholic Community podcast. For more of our shows, go to our website and click Saint Patrick's Studio.