Growing up in Faith

15th Sunday

1. Preparing a cleaning heart

Do we have any farmers here? My parents are farmers. From them, I learn, before they plant any seeds, the first thing is to cultivate the field then fertilize it. At the same time, they will remove all the grass and pick up all the stones in order to prepare a good field for the seeds. For those who do not have any experience in farming but you have children, recall your experience when you prepare everything to welcome your babies before they are born.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus told us the importance of preparing a good heart to welcome the Word of God. This preparation is to cleanse our heart. There are various kinds of grass, stone, even poisonous thing in our hearts. So, we need to constantly clean our hearts and let the Word of God grow in our hearts, our lives.
For us Catholic, prayer and confession are the best ways of cleansing our heart. Cleanliness is the way to holiness.

2. Understanding our faith

I recall one Easter here in the US I went to celebrate our most holy feast, the church was packed. Someone told me, there are lots of “CEO” coming to Mass today. I thought, so many CEO here in this church; this must be a rich parish. Then he further clarified, the “CEO” stands for “Christmas and Easter Only”.

Many people think that after baptism and confirmation, they do not need to study the Bible and Church teachings any more. St. Anselm told us that theology is faith seeking understanding. Learn to understand our faith is a life long journey. Seeking to understand our faith is not only a way to improve our faith, to build an intimate relationship with God, but also help us to share our faith, to preach the Gospel. Think about it, if we do not know who Jesus is, how will we follow him? If we do not know our faith more deeply, how will we teach our children and how do we preach the Gospel?

If we do not try to continously understand our faith to make it strong, other negative things will invade our life: worldly anxiety, the lure of becoming rich. All these will choke our precious faith and joyful life. Similarly, husband and wife also need to relentlessly learn to understand each other, to build your marriage life.

For us Catholic, going to Mass is the best way of understanding our faith. St. Jean Vianney once said: If we really understood the Mass, we would die of joy!

3. Bearing good fruits
Jesus calls us to bear good fruits. The good fruits of the Word of God are all of us, as God’s children, helping others to have the same faithful life, especially our children and our friends.

At times, we think of bearing fruits is doing something for God. Do you think that God needs us to do some special things for him? The first and foremost thing God wants us to do is to enjoy his gift, which is his heavenly life. We receive the heavenly life of God in Jesus Christ through the sacraments. So, please remember, the first fruit that we can bear is ourself---being God's faithful child.

When we become the fruit of the Word of God, we will consequently bear other fruits sharing our Christian life with our families, our relatives and our friends.

May we constantly prepare our heart to welcome the Word of God. May we daily learn to understand our faith to build an intimate relationship with God. May we also produce more fruits in our life, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.

God bless you.