16th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Fr. Leo
The contemplative Trappist, mystic, and writer, Fr. Thomas Keating, has written many books on prayer and the spiritual life. A theme that pops up again and again in his works is the teaching that God’s greatest desire is to love us. The Lord wants to share his own life with us without condition. What is required of us is simply to consent to his transforming love. God does the rest. All of it!
Surrendering to love, giving up our feeling of separateness from God and others, experienced as shame and guilt is what God wants to gift us with. This is something we cannot do, but something that God does in us. We see this in today’s scriptures.
The parable of the seed planted in the field is God’s presence planted in us. Evil in the form of false promises of happiness grows alongside us. Being faithful to God’s love will bring us to maturity and we will be harvested in God while those who refused his love will be left out.
God sustains all life and nurtures all life. The world is a mixed place of the redeemed and the as-yet unredeemed. We ourselves are a mixture of both. St. Paul experienced this as a ‘thorn’ in his flesh, and from that experience can teach us that it is “the Spirit himself that intercedes in us with inexpressible groaning.” In this, God waters the seed and brings it by his means, not ours, to the fullness of life.
I like the image of the yeast that the woman mixed with the flour which raised it up into bread. She did the mixing, but God, as yeast, raised it up into its being-bread. For us, prayer is opening ourselves to the Spirit, the yeast that will raise us up to share God’s life so that we may be one in him as he is in us.
Let us pray that we may allow God to love us into being. Let us beg his Spirit to pray in us and remove all that keeps us from living in his freedom and love. May Christ live in us and may our lives become Christ’s life in the fullness of Being. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful and enkindle in us the fire of your love!