Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2024

Today on this beautiful Father’s Day, the Sisters of Charity pray fervently for fathers everywhere. We offer up prayers for all men, fathers in so many different ways, who are images of the Loving Eternal Father of us all.  May you be blessed for the love you have given and continue to give, even when sometimes that love is taken for granted. May God bless you with peace and all good this Father’s Day.

In today’s Gospel from Mark 4:26-34 we learn of the mustard seed as the image of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the smallest of all seeds, Jesus says, but it grows into a large tree where the birds of the air find refuge. I am reminded of this parable when I read the accounts of the profound experiences countless people have had as they encounter Jesus in the Eucharistic Processions along the Way of Pilgrimage across our nation. Non-believers, finding themselves accidentally in the way of a procession, have gazed upon Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament carried by the Priest along a street, and fall to their knees with their hearts burning within them for reasons they do not understand. A person living on the streets stops a pilgrim and asks casually “What is happening?” and with the simple answer “This is Jesus who loves you very much,” a tiny seed of faith is buried in a heart that begins to realize that there is HOPE after all. An elderly resident of a nursing home has been crying quietly for three days because he can’t get out to accompany Jesus on His journey through the streets of the city, and suddenly the Priest appears in the corridor of the Home carrying Jesus in the Monstrance, and the exultant senior whispers, “Jesus, I couldn’t come to You, so You came here and found me!!” A college student struggling with her faith decides to join a procession because there is an emptiness in her heart and she thinks, well, maybe there IS something to this, and slowly feels within herself a growing hunger to be near Jesus in a way she has never felt before.

All these are tiny seeds of moments of intimacy. This is Jesus reaching out to the rich, the poor, the homeless, the father of a family, the teenage daughter of an alcoholic mother, a fervent minister who begins to wonder about this Eucharistic phenomenon that Catholics take so seriously. Small experiences leading to great conversions.  For years we will be reading and hearing about miracles that have happened this summer as Jesus walks the corridors of our land, as He once did in the streets of Palestine, pouring out His love and compassion on each of us, all of us who need His healing touch.

If you live in an area where there will be no passing procession, don’t feel that you have lost your chance. There is no distance, no space, no time with Jesus. He will come as close to you in the quiet of your private room or your back porch as He was to the worshippers on the Brooklyn Bridge or the hills of San Francisco. Call out to Him, wherever you are. Invite Him into the neighborhoods of your inner self, and He will come. As you lie awake at night pondering the scenes you have seen on your screen, whisper to Him that you, too, want to be near Him, to fall to your knees as He passes by.  Tell Him you need Him. You want to gaze upon Him as so many have these last weeks. Ask Him to drop a seed into the soil of your soul, dry and crumbling as it may be, and He will. Then, watered by your tears, that seed will rise up through the stones and brambles and carry you to His Heart. raising you up to the Kingdom of His love. Create your own Eucharistic Procession in your heart. He is waiting for you and for me just around the corner, only past the bridge, under the sycamore tree, by the Asian grocery.

If you are seeking Jesus, do not be afraid. He will find you.