Homily, 16th Sunday
by Archbishop I. A. Kaigama, 19th July 2020, St. Martin’s Parish Church, Lugbe.
Readings: Wisdom 12:13, 16-19; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43
From St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, 8:26-27, we learn that the Christian is not alone in the struggles and journey of life. St. Paul says that the Spirit expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words. The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness and when we cannot pray properly.
I invite you to pray today that the Spirit will teach us how to pray properly without ceasing, how to show mercy, and how to be active agents of evangelization.
Prayer here is not about speaking in incomprehensible tongues, but the ability to be in the presence of God, talking to him as a son or a daughter to a father; to have time and space in your heart and in your house for God at all times and not only during troubled times.
In the parable of Jesus, the weeds and the wheat are allowed to grow together, showing how our God is patient and allows us time to make amends as he did with the Israelites who consistently chose to disobey Him but He forgave them unfailingly each time they repented. The stories of King David, King Hezekiah, the people of Nineveh, etc are clear examples.
Our first reading asks us to treat others with patience and kindness just as our God never judges unjustly and is lenient to all. The language therefore of “may thunder strike you” is not of God.
The servants in the first parable today were eager to pull out the weeds but the farm owner told them to wait till harvest time, so as to avoid collateral damage. In our society we are a mixture of the good and the bad, but God is patient with us all. If God were like men, some of us would be denied rain on their farms, or sunshine in their homes. If God does not appear to be spitting fire and destroying us with thunder instantly each time we offend Him, it is because He is allowing us time for conversion; He is a God of second or even multiple chances.
We are therefore called to a humble acceptance of our nothingness and sinfulness rather than being judgmental or condescending or arrogant like the Pharisee who said: “I am not like the rest of men: robbers, unjust, adulterers even as this tax collector” (Lk 18:11). We should not give up on ourselves or grow pessimistic about others.
The three parables of the darnel and the wheat, the mustard seed and the yeast, are a call to Christians to make a difference in the work of the Kingdom of God here on earth.
Many Christians are spiritually in a slumber; they are very preoccupied with the affairs of the world that they become lukewarm and indifferent to things that pertain to faith. St. Paul writes: “Now is the time to wake up, the night is far gone” (Rom. 13:11-12).
Christians are challenged to be good seeds and shinning stars in a world of wickedness and corruption (cf. Phil. 2:15) as well as to contribute materially in building God’s Kingdom.
Many of you in Abuja Archdiocese have been excellent in contributing to the building of parish houses, churches, buying of land, through generous donations, bazaars and harvest, tithes, seed sowing, etc., for which the Archdiocese remains very grateful. In my meeting with priests last Tuesday I told them about starting new pastoral areas; that is, identifying outstations or areas that we could develop until they become parishes. We shall send priests with keen missionary sensitivity, disposition and pastoral zeal to these pastoral areas which have presently neither land, nor church nor fathers’ house, with the hope that the priests together with the people can make something out of nothing, by the special grace of God. For this reason, I am looking for volunteer Lay men and women to adopt the new pastoral areas, to groom these pastoral areas until they become quasi parishes and then full-fledged parishes, by God’s grace.
This will contribute in no small way to the further expansion of the Church into the nooks and crannies of the Federal Capital Territory. Church societies can also adopt the new pastoral areas. As it is said that great things start small, I believe that like the mustard seed, these pastoral areas will grow to become great parishes.
Dear brothers and sisters, wherever you find yourself in the Archdiocese of Abuja, please, do something concrete to be remembered for. Understand that if God decides to visit you with goodness, He will meet you in Abuja where you live and work. He will not wait till you return to your home of origin. Plant a mustard seed here and have the joy of having one of those rooms that Jesus says exist in his father’s house (cf. Jn 14:2).
Do not allow the devil prowling round like a roaring lion (cf. 1 Pet 5:8-9) to distract or discourage you from doing something noble, whether small or big, for the Kingdom of God.
Let us pray for Christians in Nigeria that we should always be a leaven in our society bedevilled by injustice, violence, terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, embezzlement of public funds, cybercrimes. Pray too that Nigeria and indeed the world be delivered from the COVID-19 disease. Amen.
