6th Sunday after Epiphany (readings) 13.11.16 Evangelisation
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a large tree which has emerged from small beginnings.
This can be interpreted as a reference to the Church, which started with just a handful of disciples, and has grown to be over a billion people.
Bigger, not necessarily better; but the ‘better’ part we are working on.
Our Lord offers the Church as a place of refuge for the birds of the air – the people of the world.
There are seven billion people in the world, so it must be that most people do not belong to the Church. This means that most people are travelling without seat belts, trying to work their way through this life without the benefit of the Church’s teachings (the word of God, properly interpreted); and without the grace available through the sacraments.
Most would say they can get by quite well, thank you; and many would say that the Church is the last thing they would want to be helping them.
It is easy to say we don’t need something if we are not aware of what that thing can do. Someone in a previous century probably would have dismissed the idea of telephones, or cars, or planes, or even learning. But we benefit from all those things once we are introduced to them. All the more can the Church benefit us.
So much of the dismissal of the Church is done through ignorance; people settling for too little too easily.
Then, of course, many people who are members of the Church do not fully appreciate the advantages they enjoy.
So we have a long way to go still, to extend the kingdom of heaven to cover the whole world.
We who do seek to extract the full meaning of belonging to the Church, have an obligation to make known to others the treasure we have discovered.
The whole process of evangelisation is based on this. Our Lord wants every person in the world to belong to His Body, to take refuge in Him. (Come to Me, all ye who labour and are heavily burdened…Mt 11,28)
To evangelise does not mean getting up in the street and giving a sermon. Speeches do come into it; the spoken word is important, also the written word. But most evangelising is done by example.
See how they love one another, was a comment in circulation regarding the early Church.
It is not all our fault that so many do not want to belong to the Church. A lot of it is their own lack of response to the signs God gives them (eg the beauty of nature, the many miracles He works in everyday life, the disorder of lives apart from Him…)
But some of it is our fault – insofar as we are not shining images of Christ; insofar as we commit sin and so impede the progress of the Gospel as a healing remedy for the world.
It is commonly said of churchgoers that they are all hypocrites; that they do not practise what they preach.
We admit the latter point. It is so much harder to do than to say. But ‘do’ we must.
There is no escape from our obligation to display by our lives the beliefs in our hearts.
First we believe; then if we believe enough we will act on those beliefs; and then at least some of the rest of the world will want to join us, by the power of our united witness.
And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2, 46-47)
Those were the days; but these can be the days too!
We are surrounded by people who do not know their right hand from their left (Jonah 4,11), and we need to offer them the word of life (and the bread).
May that tree continue to grow, offering its protection and fruit.
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