Two-Minute Homily by Fr Anthony Mellor for the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024.
“The way Jesus tells it, faith is about openness to growth, openness to the unexpected, openness to a harvest that is not our work but about what God desires for us all.”
- Two-Minute Homily Transcript
Two-Minute Homily Transcript
Author: Archdiocese of Brisbane
The lessons of the seed that Jesus talks about in this Sunday’s gospel tell us that faith is all about growth and change and maturing in our relationships with God and others. And this doesn’t happen in an instant, it takes time. A seed doesn’t grow into a tree overnight. One of the great early teachers of the church, fourth century Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, taught the newly-baptised about how our grow into faith mirrors the growth of the seed. Cyril said that faith first touches our minds and our imaginations; Faith is like an eye, he taught, that helps us see and understand our ourselves and our world. This is the first step in faith, but Cyril said that there is also a second step faith leads to action. This action is not just ours alone, faith is also an action in partnership with God.God adds to our good deeds, so that our Christian service produces more than we could ever achieve on our own. God value-adds to our small, daily acts of Christian living. In the words of Saint Cyril, “For just as a grain of mustard seed is of little bulk but of explosive energy so to the faith present in a person’s soul achieves the greatest things by the smallest of decisions”. It is God who provides the explosive energy hidden in the seed of faith.
So, as Jesus and Cyril and countless other teachers throughout the ages remind us, faith is a lifetime of growth and coming to maturity. The truth that Jesus teaches is that even a little faith goes a long way. Even the quietest daily yes to God can have, to repeat the words of Saint Cyril, the most explosive possibilities. This is because faith is less about our yes to God and more about God’s yes to us. It is God who plants the seed; it is God who makes it grow; it is God who produces the harvest. Our task is simply to nurture the seed that is already planted and through our quiet yes to God, and in gentle, patient hope, allow the rain and the sun and the nutrients of the soil of life to do their work on us.
The way Jesus tells it, faith is about openness to growth, openness to the unexpected, openness to a harvest that is not our work but about what God desires for us all. God’s yes to us, already planted deep in our hearts, longs to hear even the quietest, whispered yes from us and then, when we respond even in the most modest way, God alone knows what might happen next.