FROM ACORN TO MIGHTY OAK

 A SERMON FOR THE 25TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST (6TH AFTER EPIPHANY)

The kingdom of heaven, says our Lord, is like to a grain of mustard seed.  How so, you might ask.  Well, because when you take a look at this tiny little grain of mustard seed you’d probably think to yourself, how could this “least of all seeds” grow into “a mighty tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”  And though you may wonder, yet it does.  From the tiny acorn grows the mighty oak.  This is the nature that God created.

Why did God create nature this way, that great things grow out of small beginnings?  I believe that this is God’s way of reflecting the glory of his kingdom.  I believe that very firmly because our Lord himself tells us that this is so.  “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed.”  And so, when, in the midst of the doom and gloom that currently surround us in this sinful world, I see glimmers of hope, I do not cynically shrug them off as “too little too late”.  Nor am I entirely committed to the idea that these are indeed the end times, and that the world is plunging headlong into destruction.  It is quite possible that the small signs of hope we begin to see are indeed the start of a great backlash against the enemies of God who so smugly feel that they control us.

The world has gone through bad times before, very bad times.  Maybe these times truly are the worst ever, with the almost universal apostasy of the institutional Church, which is unprecedented.  But glimmers of hope have begun to appear.  Signs that point to an increasing awareness among the masses of the evil that is dragging them down, evil that is becoming so pervasive in their lives that they are starting to wake up and take notice—and, I hope, do something about.  I do not expect a revolution or civil war.  I certainly do not believe there will be the “Kraken” we were promised by the well-meant but misguided earlier this year.  But slowly, surely, like the growth of a great tree from a tiny seed, I do see something happening.

In the Conciliar Church, for example, we see an increasing number of clergy questioning the draconian and heretical pronouncements of their pope.  The growing openness of this man’s hostility to all things Catholic, typified by his recent declaration that Joseph Biden, a man dedicated to murdering as many unborn babies as he possibly can, is “a good Catholic and should continue receiving Communion,” has scandalized cardinals, bishops, priests and laity alike.  Bergoglio’s commitment to wiping the traditional Holy Mass from the face of the earth is beginning to be seen for what it is—the radical re-invention of what the Catholic Church is.  And clergy like Archbishop Vigano, Cardinal Burke, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, and others are speaking out more ad more clearly from within the Conciliar Church against their boss.  It is a mere mustard seed of hope, but let’s watch that mustard seed and pray for its growth.  All in good time.  All in God’s time.

And in our nation, more mustard seeds have apparently been sown.  We had elections a couple of weeks ago, which did something to help eradicate the painful memory of what happened just one year ago.  The blue state of Virginia turned red overnight, people everywhere turned out to reject the progressive “woke” ideology and the left’s Nazi-like agenda to usurp our constitutional rights.  The population at large is starting to understand the dangers posed by the vaccine mandate, for example; dangers not just from the medical standpoint, but the even greater danger of the government, and not we ourselves, controlling what happens to our own body, our health and welfare.  It is dawning on the population that it is a very bad thing to allow the government (any government, but especially this one!) to control what is taught to our children in the schools.  People are waking up.  And when all these people use their constitutional right to vote against the progressive agenda, we must remember just what they are, each one of them just a tiny individual mustard seed, which if you add them all up has the potential to grow into an enormous forest of change for the better.

Mind you, we mustn’t confuse true hope with simply being naïve.  Let’s not forget last week’s Gospel when the householder planted good seed and while he slept evil men came and sowed cockle among the wheat.  “An enemy hath done this,” he explained, and he was right.  And we must expect that the enemies of God will not disappear without a fight.  In fact, the worse it gets for them, the more desperate they will become.  We already know that their thirst for power knows no bounds and that they show blatant disregard for our welfare, our health, our financial well-being, or even the common good of the nation.  Any signs of those mustard seeds growing into a mighty force will be met with resistance, persecution and violence.  They may even win!  That is why it is now, more than ever, so important to place our hope in God that he will deliver us, to pray our Rosary, to offer up our daily crosses, all for the return of sanity to the Church, our nation, and the world at large.

Remember, Hope is a virtue.  In fact, it’s one of the three most important virtues, the cardinal virtues along with faith and charity.  We must never lose that hope in God, never doubt his ability or his willingness to inspire goodness in his children.  He gave man free will to choose him.  He doesn’t withdraw that free will by intervening openly with divine power and wiping out his enemies.  What he does do is inspire us.  He breathes into us his Holy Spirit, so that we in turn may correspond with those graces by choosing with our free will to do what is right.  More and more people seem to be doing just that!  The seed has been planted.  Pray that it continues to grow.