16th Week in Ordinary time

The Lord shows his presence

The Lord appears in claps of thunder with trumpet blasts and lightning. He summons Moses to the top of mount Sinai. Moses spoke to God and God replied with Thunder. So the Jewish people had come to Mount Sinai in the 3rd month of their journey from Egypt. God reveals himself in a mysterious way. If you witnessed what was going on, you knew something was happening of a supernatural nature as nature itself was called to testify to God’s presence.

one of the ways Jesus announces his presence through parables. He says to his disciples, “the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven has been granted to you.” Why does Jesus preaching have such a diverse impact on the hearers? This is the mystery of God’s grace. We are recipients of God’s grace but it is up to us to accept and participate in what he has given us. This reading illustrates the flowing of grace and the free will of the receivers of that grace. This reading comes just after the parable of the sower. Sowing on fertile ground, those who accept grace working in their lives, bear much fruit. The disciples don’t understand the parable of the sower initially, they have to cooperate with grace and move from the darkness into the light. Jesus shows patience as the great teacher he is and leads them to a clear understanding. We as the readers of the gospel can understand this in 2 ways; the context of the life of Jesus at that time and further, our life in the context of the Church today. People are following Jesus and listening to him, but there are those who hear and don’t understand, they are deaf to God, like the religious authorities of that time. Others are week and unable to commit to this new gospel. Or they misinterpret to their own ends. We have that today in the world and in our own church. Jesus testimony was also in the form of miracles and the same treatment occured with them in terms of belief or denial. Infertile ground as far as we are concerned are those who fail to defend the faith when they are challenged, or claim to be in the Faith yet practice life as though they are not. The certain thing is that the word of God always finds some fertile ground. Some faithful who produce fruit. We are not the same in this regard, what is good fruit for someone might look different for someone else, depending on the charisms we are given by the Holy Spirit, again being open to the grace we receive. What do I glean from all of this? That the word is alive, it lives in the believer who acts upon it. It lives on the lips of the kind person with a heart to serve, it lives in the heart of the Father and Mother caring for there children in righteous love. It is alive, powerful, and it is above all love.