Friday 31 January 2025

Today is Friday the 31st of January, the feast of St John Bosco, in the 3rd week of Ordinary Time. Ex Cathedra, directed by Jeffrey Skidmore, sing Hanaq Pachap Kusikuynin, a hymn in the Quechua language of South America, a beautiful prayer which I might make my own as I listen now: “Bliss of heaven: a thousand times I adore you. Tree of uncountable fruits. Hope of the peoples. Pillar of the weak. Listen to my prayer.” Today’s reading is from the Gospel of Mark. Mark 4:26-34 [Jesus] also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’ He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’ With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. In this passage, Jesus tells two stories about “the Kingdom of God”. The two stories both talk about the astonishing process of growth - something that was perhaps more familiar to Jesus and his audience than it is to us. Take some time to sit with these images of seed, growth and harvest… How does this version of the kingdom of God speak to you? Does a particular image stay with you? Now listen to the passage again. Ask yourself, “Is Jesus challenging me to do something here? What does he want me to do? Am I willing to do it?” Finally sum up all that you have felt and thought in the last few minutes and offer it as a prayer to God the Father, or to Jesus, or to the Holy Spirit. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.