The Expansiveness of the Kingdom: The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024

The Expansiveness of the Kingdom:

The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time 2024 

June 16, 2024

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Ezekiel 17:22-24; Psalm 92; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34

 

Ezekiel’s passage contains God’s promises for an overturned social order, much like Mary’s Magnificat, in which the proud are brought low and the low are exalted to a place of honor. God’s kingdom is unlike human fairness and reason. God promises Israel and all creation is under God’s watchful care. In God’s world, one can be confident that God intends the best for even the least fortunate. One must be patient in God’s promise of evolution.

 

The Gospel offers views of the Kingdom by comparison with the seed that sprouts and the mustard seed. How growth happens, we humans do not know. We can follow principles and natural laws, and we can predict what may happen, but we do not know the properties that govern the transformation of life and the growth that accompanies it. We can plant 20 seeds in right conditions, and we cannot determine which ones die and which ones grow. The mystery of how remains within God’s purview. We simply watch and hope. As much as we can engineer the environment around a planted seed, we cannot regulate its growth. 

 

What do these stories tell us about God’s kingdom? It is breaking in around us and it is governed by God’s laws and principles, and the mystery is beyond our knowing. Jesus wants us to realize that the in-breaking of the kingdom is happening in our midst, and we are to notice the signs and wonders. It will happen without human intervention and control and there is nothing we can do to stop it. It belongs to God, and not to human invention, and it will return to God.

 

The mustard seed story tells us that the kingdom is more expansive than we anticipate. From the tiniest beginnings, it blossoms into something almost beyond our imagination. We are to look for the superabundance of God as it is happening around us. It is meant for us, and for creation, and there is nothing we can do to stop its blossoming and evolution before our very eyes. It is not human dependent, and it belongs to God’s majestic dream for the cosmos.

 

Jesus implores us to notice the in-breaking of the kingdom into our lives. It ought to diminish much of the stress we feel about how the world ought to grow. It is God who will make the withered tree bloom and lift up the lowly tree. It is God who brings low the high trees and plants a shoot on the highest point to grow. We simply have to cooperate with God’s growth and let God’s grace develop within us. It means we are to respond to invitations and nudges, that we are to say yes to something that might be freeing and out of our comfort zones. It means trusting that God’s mercy will reign and that all in the end, all will be well. It ought to give us assurance and comfort that everything in life does not depend upon us, that we do not have to illusion of control that we think we do, that God will find a way whether we cooperate or resist. It ought to make us carefree and joyful knowing that God intends the best for us and for those around us. It ought to make us relax and to behold God’s mysteries, and to be satisfied that we are part of God’s world, and that God knows us. It simplifies life when we honor God’s actions and conform with God’s plans for us.            

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

Monday: (1 Kings 21) Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel next to the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. Ahab said to Naboth, “Give me your vineyard to be my vegetable garden, since it is close by, next to my house. I will give you a better vineyard in exchange, or, if you prefer, I will give you its value in money.”

 

Tuesday: (1 Kings 21) After the death of Naboth the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite: "Start down to meet Ahab, king of Israel, who rules in Samaria. He will be in the vineyard of Naboth, of which he has come to take possession.

 

Wednesday: (2 Kings 2) When the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, he and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, “Please stay here; the LORD has sent me on to the Jordan.” “As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you,” Elisha replied.

 

Thursday: (Sirach 48) Like a fire there appeared the prophet Elijah whose words were as a flaming furnace. Their staff of bread he shattered, in his zeal he reduced them to straits;
By the Lord’s word he shut up the heavens and three times brought down fire.

 

Friday (2 Kings 11) When Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, saw that her son was dead,
she began to kill off the whole royal family. But Jehosheba, daughter of King Jehoram and sister of Ahaziah, took Joash, his son, and spirited him away, along with his nurse,
from the bedroom where the princes were about to be slain. She concealed him from Athaliah, and so he did not die.

 

Saturday (2 Chronicles 24) After the death of Jehoiada, the princes of Judah came and paid homage to King Joash, and the king then listened to them. They forsook the temple of the LORD, the God of their fathers, and began to serve the sacred poles and the idols.

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (Matthew 5) You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.

 

Tuesday: (Matthew 5) You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

 

Wednesday (Matthew 6) Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others.

 

Thursday (Matthew 6) In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

 

Friday (Matthew 6) Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.

 

Saturday (Matthew 6) Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

 

Saints of the Week

 

June 19: Romuald, abbot (950-1027), was born into a family of dukes from Ravenna and became known for founding the Camaldolese Benedictine order that combined the solitary life of hermits into a monastic community life. He founded other hermitages and monasteries throughout Italy. 

 

June 21: Aloysius Gonzaga, S.J., priest (1568-1591), gave up a great inheritance to join the Jesuits in 1585 in his dreams of going to the missions. However, when a plague hit Rome, Gonzaga served the sick and dying in hospitals where he contracted the plague and died within three months. He is a patron saint of youth.

 

June 22: Paulinus of Nola, bishop (353-431) was a prominent lawyer who married a Spaniard and was baptized. Their infant son died while in Spain. He became a priest and was sent to Nola, near Naples, where he lived a semi-monastic life and helped the poor and pilgrims. 

 

June 22: John Fisher, bishop and martyr (1469-1535) taught theology at Cambridge University and became the University Chancellor and bishop of Rochester. Fisher defended the queen against Henry VIII who wanted the marriage annulled. Fisher refused to sign the Act of Succession. When the Pope made Fisher a cardinal, the angry king beheaded him. 

 

June 22: Thomas More, martyr (1478-1535) was a gifted lawyer, Member of Parliament, scholar, and public official. He was reluctant to serve Cardinal Woolsey at court and he resigned after he opposed the king’s Act of Succession, which would allow him to divorce his wife. He was imprisoned and eventually beheaded.

 

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• June 16, 1675. St Margaret Mary Alacoque received her great revelation about devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 
• June 17, 1900. The martyrdom at Wuyi, China, of Blesseds Modeste Andlauer and Remy Asore, slain during the Boxer Rebellion. 
• June 18, 1804. Fr. John Roothan, a future general of the Society, left his native Holland at the age of seventeen to join the Society in White Russia. 
• June 19, 1558. Fr. Lainez, the Vicar General, summoned the opening of the First General Congregation, nearly two years after the death of Ignatius. Some trouble arose from the fact that Fr. Bobadilla thought himself entitled to some share in the governance. Pope Paul IV ordered that the Institute of the Society should be strictly adhered to. 
• June 20, 1626. The martyrdom in Nagasaki, Japan, of Blesseds Francis Pacheco, John Baptist Zola, Vincent Caun, Balthasar De Torres, Michael Tozo, Gaspar Sadamatzu, John Kinsaco, Paul Xinsuki, and Peter Rinscei. 
• June 21, 1591. The death of St Aloysius Gonzaga, who died from the plague, which he caught while attending the sick. 
• June 22, 1611. The first arrival of the Jesuit fathers in Canada, sent there at the request of Henry IV of France.