Here is sage advice from Saint Francis de Sales. Saint Francis de Sales recommended frequent mental prayer that has our Lord’s life and passion as its objects. Frequent meditation on Christ will fill our soul with Him, teach us His ways and frame all our actions on His divine model. Let us consider Mark’s gospel today with an eye to how the Lord is teaching us the ways of His Kingdom and how to properly frame our response.
Teaching the Kingdom of God
The first line of Mark’s Gospel today sets a scene – “Jesus said to the crowds.” We can picture the vast throng of people stretched before Jesus somewhere along the shoreline of the Lake of Gennesaret. We know this crowd includes Jews and gentiles, men, women and children – the universal Church preparing to be born. Jesus is instructing them on a first principle of momentous importance: exactly what is this Kingdom of God?
Jesus wanted to instruct the crowd on how His Kingdom would grow on earth by the lodging of God’s Word in human hearts. Master story teller that He is, Jesus based His lesson on an agricultural motif that all of His audience would be sure to understand.
The growth of the Kingdom of God on earth depends, in part, on human agency – man will scatter the seed. However, the fullness of the Kingdom does not depend on human effort or ingenuity. It grows to fullness through the grace of our Lord Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
The Church and the Kingdom of God
Through the parable of the mustard seed Jesus tells His listeners that though the start of His Kingdom is small, in time it will grow to encompass all creation. In subsequent parables and teaching Jesus reveals that God has chosen the Church as His means to propagate His Kingdom through space and time. In another agricultural metaphor, Christ is the body of the Church, and He is the vine to which we are grafted.
Mark’s gospel contains a preview of the establishment of the Church hierarchy when he says “Without parables He did not speak to them but to His own disciples He explained everything in private.”
Framing our Response
A few thoughts on possible responses to Jesus’ examples as related in today’s Gospel. We need the Word of God to spread His Kingdom. We must be both listeners and sharers (sowers) of God’s Word to do this. Our openness to God’s Word is necessary but we must be humble enough to understand that it is God’s grace that secures the success of our missions on behalf of His Kingdom. The Church is central to this mission. Outside of the Church we are like ungrafted tendrils of vine that will eventually wither and die.
Thank God for the gift of His Word and the gift of His Church!
