God has Called Us to Bear Fruit
Message from the St. John XXIII Administrator: Fr. Jay
Dear Friends,
My Grandfather was an uneducated, but very smart man. He was the one who taught the basic prayers like Sign of the Cross and Our Father and Hail Mary to my older brother and me when we were very little (6 and 4 years old). One day with excitement, we were watching him plant a vegetable garden in the backyard. He prepared the ground and planted okra and eggplant seeds. I was very inquisitive and asked him when these seeds would sprout as plants. His smart reply was, if I would recite the Our Father and Hail Mary prayers 10 times each for three days, the blades would appear miraculously! My brother and I were running back and forth many times each day of the first three days that week and recited the prayers in front of the seed bed. Wow! What a miracle on the fourth day of the week. We found the blades sprouting through the ground! It was probably the first miracle that I ever experienced in my life and of course by that time I had those prayers memorized!
[button open_new_tab=”true” color=”accent-color” hover_text_color_override=”#fff” image=”default-arrow” size=”large” url=”https://johnxxiii.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Bulletin071623w.pdf” text=”DOWNLOAD THE BULLETIN” color_override=””]In the gospel this weekend, we see Jesus talking about the sower and seeds falling on different types of ground. The sower probably had plenty of seeds and was very generous to spill all over the place! We do not need an explanation for this parable since Jesus himself explained it well. The message that we could learn is that God has called us to produce fruit.
Our life terrain might not always be fertile… sometimes with rocky ground or thorny bushes choking us. When someone in our family undergoes struggles and challenges in their personal or family lives, the power of His word gives hope, courage and strength. Reading II: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.
Reading I reiterates our hope that “my word shall not return to me void but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it”. In the beginning, God was engaging with humanity in the form of “Word” and later sent His Word in the form of Jesus (Word made flesh) who finally instituted the Holy Eucharist as perpetual gift to the humanity (and dwelt among us). So with the nourishment of our Faith derived from the Word and Holy Eucharist we are called to produce the fruit of thirty, sixty or hundred fold. The grace of the Lord is always ready for us, like the rain showers and snow falling from the heavens.
God Bless,
Fr. Jay Raju
