The Mystery of the Kingdom

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 4:26-34.

Jesus said to the crowds:
“This is how it is with the kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and through it all the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.”

He said,
“To what shall we compare the kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
With many such parables
he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it.
Without parables he did not speak to them,
but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.

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Reflection

The Kingdom of God is one of most misunderstood and less preached themes of our Christian faith. However, it is one of the central themes of Jesus ministry while he was on earth. All of the Gospels touch on the topic because Jesus Himself dwelt on the topic in his preaching. This Sunday, we hear Jesus speak of it in parables.

Parables and comparisons are the only way to convey a reality that escapes full human understanding. That is exactly the point of the Gospel. The Kingdom of God is a reality that encompasses but in itself is not encompassed by a single human being. It is a mystery that is rooted, grows, and is nourished in the internal life of a person. How the human person is invited into the Kingdom, how he enters it, and what happens as he grows in it, is completely unbeknownst to the outside. Each human person can sense it in himself but cannot fully understand it nor fully explain it.

Jesus today explains that this Kingdom though not understood fully does exist because God scatters the seed of the Kingdom in all human hearts. We cannot explain the experience to each other fully because each experience of it is unique to each individual. The Kingdom after all is about a loving relationship with God. As in a relationship, it not defined but lived and experienced. It grows because God nurtures it in each individual. God is the Divine Gardener, we are the soil.

This means our relationship with God is God’s work in us. It is He who plants, waters, and nourishes. All the soil has to do is to be open, to cooperate to grace and allow the seed to spring up, grow, and contribute to the life-giving atmosphere of God’s garden. This means the human heart has to be docile, to listen, and to obey. If the soil hardens it stifles the seed but if it responds to the initiatives of the Gardener, it allows for something that is internal to manifest itself externally.

This is exactly Christian life. We always begin with a loving relationship with God and allow Him to work in us. Responding to His grace, we grow and mature in His love. Over the years, we come to full maturity and bear fruit and offer harvest to the God who invested so much love in us.

Jesus’ Family

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 14:12-16, 22-26.

Jesus came home with his disciples.
Again the crowd gathered,
making it impossible for them even to eat.
When his relatives heard of this they set out to seize him,
for they said, "He is out of his mind."
The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said,
"He is possessed by Beelzebul,"
and "By the prince of demons he drives out demons."
Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables,
"How can Satan drive out Satan?
If a kingdom is divided against itself,
that kingdom cannot stand.
And if a house is divided against itself,
that house will not be able to stand.
And if Satan has risen up against himself
and is divided, he cannot stand;
that is the end of him

But no one can enter a strong man's house to plunder his property
unless he first ties up the strong man.
Then he can plunder the house.
Amen, I say to you,
all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be
forgiven them.
But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit
will never have forgiveness,
but is guilty of an everlasting sin."
For they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."

His mother and his brothers arrived.
Standing outside they sent word to him and called him.
A crowd seated around him told him,
"Your mother and your brothers and your sisters
are outside asking for you."
But he said to them in reply,
"Who are my mother and my brothers?"
And looking around at those seated in the circle he said,
"Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of God
is my brother and sister and mother."

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Reflection

What is the best visible expression of true Christian faith? It is community!

Jesus, true to His claim, is the Shepherd who came to gather the lost sheep of humanity. Where there were 12 people who were from different backgrounds, He formed a group of Apostles. Where there were public sinners, the misfits, the deformed, and the poor, He touched, healed, and gathered around Him. Jesus was busy building a community of people, healing the wounds of brokenness within men and among men.

Sin and the devil causes fractures within us and among us but for those who are called to follow Jesus, we are bound by the love of the Spirit. To sin against the Holy Spirit means to go against the call of communion; and there is no forgiveness in that in the sense that one cannot include someone who wants to exclude himself!

But the call to community in Jesus is also a challenge. It is a community not bound by blood nor association. It is a community bound by faith and obedience to God. God is the source of all unity. Anyone who wishes to be faithful to God will naturally find this unity in Jesus who showed us how to follow God’s will. Because in Jesus, doing the will of God means taking God as Father and taking upon oneself the obligations of being a beloved child of God, making one a brother, a sister, and a mother to Jesus and siblings to each other. In this communion, we see that God’s will is expressed in the person of Jesus, in what Jesus does, and in the life of the community, which is the Church today.

Why We Eat Jesus in the Mass

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 14:12-16, 22-26.
On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread,
when they sacrificed the Passover lamb,
Jesus’ disciples said to him,
"Where do you want us to go
and prepare for you to eat the Passover?"
He sent two of his disciples and said to them,
"Go into the city and a man will meet you,
carrying a jar of water.
Follow him.
Wherever he enters, say to the master of the house,
'The Teacher says, "Where is my guest room
where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"'
Then he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready.
Make the preparations for us there."
The disciples then went off, entered the city,
and found it just as he had told them;
and they prepared the Passover.
While they were eating,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, gave it to them, and said,
"Take it; this is my body."
Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them,
and they all drank from it.
He said to them,
"This is my blood of the covenant,
which will be shed for many.
Amen, I say to you,
I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine
until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God."
Then, after singing a hymn,
they went out to the Mount of Olives.

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Reflection

Continuing the tradition of the first Christians, we Catholics gather once a week to celebrate the "breaking of the bread", the ritual we celebrate every Sunday which commemorates Jesus' last supper which He commanded to "do this in memory of me." Such a ritual is so pronounced and is deemed important in the Church that it is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, given a long theological discourse by John (chapters 13-17), and taught by Paul in his missions. This ritual is the Holy Mass.

The significance of this ritual is rooted in the Jewish ritual sacrifice. The Jews worship God by offering gifts in the Temple. Except for the burnt offering, all other offerings are either eaten by the priest or by the one offering after they have been offered in the altar. Such offerings are a recognition of God's power, a prayer for forgiveness, or a prayer of thanksgiving. Jesus, however, in His institution of the Eucharist, replaced these with one single offering that supersedes all others. The ritual that He performed together with His disciples, while having Jewish roots have taken novel elements.

This sets apart the Christian ritual of the Holy Mass. In the Mass, we do not offer anything to God other than Jesus Himself who said, "this is my body... this is my blood..." The other offerings that we have given during the offertory are but expressions of Christian charity for the Church and the poor. Only Jesus is the offering, strictly speaking, inside the celebration of the Holy Mass. Anything that we offer, taken from the earth, could not satisfy the majesty of God. Jesus is the perfect offering because He is the Father's "beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."

This Sunday's celebration then is about Jesus' offering of Himself on the altar. No longer carcasses of animals, but the very Body and Blood of the Son is offered on the altar to the Father. And after being raised up on high and acclaimed by the people with the great "Amen!", the Christian community partakes of the offering in communion. We literally eat Jesus, who by force of His Word spoken by the instrument of the priest's person, has turned the bread and wine into His Flesh and Blood, so that in doing so, we become part of His Body and nourished by His Blood.