Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
The kingdom silently grows in the history
He said,”This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. ….It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” Mc 4,26-32
“A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest” the famous aphorism of the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tse says. Every day, opening the newspaper or turning on the television, we see a long list of falling trees, because the media give us only bad news. You then wonder why the world is not yet over and all the economic systems are not yet bankrupted. The fact is that, despite the daily fall of the trees, the forest continues to grow. The forest is the kingdom of God, it is the good which, while suffering defeats, always prevails over the evil. Today we are faced with two parables which tell us about the seed: the first invites us to trust, because the good seed grows silently under the earth: the second announces that it is destined to become “greater than all the plants of the garden and it makes such big branches that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade”. When Mark wrote his parables Jesus had already died on the cross, he had been underground for three days, he was resurrected, the Holy Spirit had descended on the disciples at Pentecost and the church was founded: because of this, the evangelist can already see the kingdom of God extended in the future up to embrace all the peoples. He sees the kingdom to grow in the way which was started with the parables of Jesus and which is described to us by the parables of the gospel. It grows in the trials and in the persecution, in the shadows, in the silence, in the patience and in the humility. It is the way of God. It is true that even in the great forest of the kingdom of heaven there are falling trees, but those which grow become so large that the birds of the air can make the nests under their shade. On some day, during the morning prayer, the Lord told us who these birds seeking protection in the branches of large trees are: they are the small, the poor, the needy people, those who need to lean on someone to walk. They are single people, those who have lost hope and who are seeking the truth. All these little ones, in the great forest of the kingdom, can always find a well grown tree under which to be protected and to sing praises to the Lord. And it is like the trees would sing.