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Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A

Reflecting on Matthew 13: 24-43

I’ve got the window open, and I’m eavesdropping on the conversation going on in our backyard.  There are at least six gardeners out there, laughing, chatting, and pulling weeds.  We were lucky enough to have our nearly-one-hundred-year-old back yard included in the Farmyard Community Supported Agriculture yards that these ingenious gardeners turn in to urban paradises every summer.

Debbie, the CEO and most astonishing Green Thumb of the organization, is casually mentioning her 45th birthday tomorrow.  The rest of the group feigns ignorance, asking random questions about how she is planning to celebrate.  She doesn’t have any plans.

If she only knew.  The real reason the full-court press on the weeds in our yard is happening today is that tomorrow night the yard next door to us, owned by Debbie’s great friends and co-workers, will be bedecked with summer tables and chairs and lanterns, and the heavenly fruits and vegetables Debbie’s gardens produce.  Our yard has to look equally beautiful, even though it’s only the staging ground for Debby’s surprise party.

It will be the best eating of the summer, until the fall feast that Debbie herself prepares for all the workers.  It’s early, still, to have a totally sustainable garden party.  But this group…mmm, boy do they know how to cook.

It’s always a mystery where all the weeds come from.  They are so careful to plant the seeds in the beautifully- tilled ground in March.  Weeding is a tedious task, but the gardeners do it with good cheer and optimism. 

God is endlessly at work weeding out what is deadly in us, too. Take a hoe to me, Master Gardener.  I want to look good for the Party.

In what ways are you producing good fruit?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Ordinary Time - Cycle A

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