CULTIVATING THE CHURCH GARDEN

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 24TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Today’s Gospel about mustard seeds makes me think about the garden my parents used to work at so tirelessly throughout the year.  They didn’t grow mustard, mind you, but we had a garden in the front of the house where my father cultivated his roses, helped along with some natural but very unpleasant fertilizer that he made me pick up with my little wheelbarrow every time a horse and cart went past.  Meanwhile, in the other garden behind our home, there was a greenhouse filled with tomatoes and other edible things that made their way to my mother’s salads and into her homemade wine.

 

Many of us will probably have similar memories of our parents and the care they took to grow flowers, plants, fruit and vegetables.  It was one of those “nice” things they did, and we remember them with fondness.  But the attention they paid to gardening was nothing compared with the careful and continual devotion they gave to the raising of their children—us.

 

We were their little mustard seeds, and they watched us grow from “the least of all seeds” into what they hoped would be the “greatest among herbs.”  And how did that work out?  Have we grown up and fulfilled their ambitions for us?  Have we truly become something they would be proud of?  We’re a work in process, so let’s not give up on becoming what they hoped we would be.  As we become adults we must take over the cultivation of our souls by practicing the values and virtues they instilled in us, by maintaining the faith they taught us.  And then we must pass on the same faith and values to our own children, raising our own little mustard seeds in our turn.

 

This is our gravest duty as parents.  We have a natural instinct to protect our children from harm, but this instinct must be reinforced and surpassed by a supernatural impulse to protect them from the devil, the world, and their own fallen nature.  Our own experience of life tells us that there is no way they are going to escape the assaults of all three.  Our battle will be their battle and our victories must become their victories.  But with the help of God, we must protect them from repeating our failures.  If we have not lived up to our parents’ dreams, we must at least do our utmost to make sure their grandchildren do better.

 

Teach the catechism, prepare them diligently for their First Communion and for their Confirmation.  Teach them the Bible stories we learned at the feet of our own mother, pass on the Catholic customs and traditions to the next generation so that they may continue to pass them on long after we are gone.  This is the Church’s garden, so let’s not allow it to become overgrown with weeds and thistles.