33 Sunday In Ordinary Time, Nov. 16, 2014

Written by Fr. Fitz Thursday, 13 November 2014 13:08

Today, a long Gospel, a short lesson.

The gospel is very long, but the lesson pretty practical: Do not bury your talent in the gound.

 

As I reflect on the Gospel, I sit looking out my window, and I reflect on what I see. As the East shivers under an Artic blast, the orange trees across the way are burdened down with ripening oranges. It will be the second harvest of the year. They, in their own way are responding to the Gospel call for fruitfulness. 

Across the way Jesus is trimming bushes. [Not the Gospel Jesus, but the Hispanic one.] He too is respondig to the Gospel call. We live in a glorious park, and it is filled with blooming plants and bushes, orange trees, lemon trees, lime trees, all there for the picking. And all verdant and fruitful because Jesus uses his green thumb and gardener talent to care for them: no buried talent there!

Awhile ago, my neighbor appeared on the sidewalk you see here on his scooter. He is in Hospice. They come every day to help him with tasks he can no longer perform because hid cardiac system is weakened to near death.

But he was smiling nonetheless, and he summons up the energy to daily scatter bird seed fir the quail.

Kindness and thoughtfulness is a talent that rises to the surface and does not lie buried.

There is a saying: "Be everything you can be." Jesus is. So is my neighbor in hospice.

The Gospel today proclaims:

"Since you were faithful in small things,I will give you greater responsibilities. come share your master's joy."

Cutting hedges, pushig a wheel barrow... putting birdseed out means tending to small things.

Saint Teresa who never traveled farther than her own window was faithdul to little things. She called her spiritual path, "a little way."

"Carpe diem!" Sieze the moment means paying attention to little opportunities. 

Not every day are there great challenges. But every day there are small opportunities. Small ways to ripen our talents and  as the song proclaims: "Bloom where you are planted!"

Let us pray:

O God source of every energy and talent, help me to sieze each day as opportunity.

May lif e spring up around me, because I tend to the little things in my Garden of Life.