27th Sunday after Pentecost 16.11.08 Sermon

27th Sunday after Pentecost (Readings from 6th Sunday after Epiphany) 16.11.08 Slow growth

Trees are not the only things that grow slowly. People grow slowly too. A baby starts out very small and might end up over 6 feet tall. It takes a long time and if we stared hard at the person we would not see him getting taller. Yet it happens. And so with the Church which the tree in the parable represents. It grows somehow despite the tremendous opposition it has faced ever since the beginning.

Only by the miraculous intervention of God’s grace can this have happened. Despite all the empires and regimes trying to suppress us; despite huge internal tensions; despite the dullness of the average member of the Church – yet through all that we still exist and we have every hope of getting bigger and better.

We do not see this steady growth; we can only compare one time with another and see the difference.

However, while it is nice to be able to talk about a billion Catholics, and we can really turn out a crowd sometimes we know there is another kind of growth that needs to happen. - a growth in holiness.

This is something that does not happen automatically like physical growth. We grow in holiness only if we want to do that and are prepared to work towards it.
Holiness does not grow on trees we might say.

Most people who go to Confession would find they confess the same sins each time. This is natural insofar as we tend to fall in the areas where we are weakest.

But it is also frustrating that we cannot shake off these persistent sins and bad habits.
We would love to be free of sin altogether and often say that we will not sin again; yet sin we do.

How can we grasp this elusive holiness and make real and lasting progress, once and for all clearing the weeds from our souls and turning them into beautiful gardens?

We can work on two fronts – the general and the particular.

The general front is that we renounce sin in principle whenever and as often as we can – such as in Acts of Contrition, Acts of Consecration, every time we receive Holy Communion (at least implicitly we renounce sin). ‘I will not sin again’, with Your help, we hastily add.

But the principle is clear. If we could avoid all sin just by saying so, we would. It is important to make this affirmation to keep the proper focus in view. In this way we come to mean those words a little more fervently each time we say them.

The particular front is that we take each bad habit we have and work on it to reduce its hold on us.
If we lose our temper six times a day, then cut that down to five. It is progress. One sin less is a great thing. If every one in the world committed one less sin a day that would be six billion sins a day, and 2190 billion sins a year!

We might be weak but we do not have to be hopeless. Our hope is in Christ and He is the source of all holiness. If we come to Him for mercy we must also expect strength. He does not forgive us just to go and do the same thing again. He fortifies us with grace; He makes us stronger and better people, so we do not fall into the same traps.

This takes time, but first we have to understand what is happening. Combining the general detestation of sin with the particular measures to avoid this or that sin, we will make progress and we will grow spiritually to great heights. As invididuals grow so does the Church.

Better to have a thousand saints than a million mediocres, but why not have a million saints?
No reason why not. If trees can do it, so can we. We may not notice the change but we will be better people after one year or any other measure of time.

May the Lord give us growth.