Florida Catholic | Sunday Word

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

God’s word is hope in a world transfixed by violence and death

July 13, 2008 :: Is 55:10-11; Ps 65:10, 11, 12-13, 14; Rom 8:18-23; Mt 13:1-23 or 13:1-9

MSGR. MICHAEL V. REED | CATHEDRAL OF THE SACRED HEART, PENSACOLA

It’s got to be one of my favorite ancient stories. It’s not edifying or beautiful, but it had a profound impact on the people of Israel while they were in exile in Babylon from around 598 to 538 B.C. Every year the Babylonians would re-enact their creation story called the “Enuma Elish” (“Out of the Heavens” – a story that goes back some believe to the 17th century B.C.)

The “Enuma Elish” was presented in the form of a procession that wound through city streets. The people of Israel were forced to participate and watch this annual spectacle. What they saw and heard was chaos, turmoil and disorder that climaxed in the “son of the god” slaying his mother then being slain himself and from all the blood would come humanity, man and woman.

Sounds like some popular modern-day movie and television fare full of violence, bloodshed, murder and death. Amazingly, the people of Israel didn’t buy the story and when we read the beginning of the Book of Genesis we experience in an incredible contrast what they believed. For Israel, God created the heavens, earth, creatures and people not through violence or bloodshed, but by the power of his word. God’s word is the powerful creative source of everything.

And Jesus is God’s word come to earth, the Gospel of John tells us. In the Gospel of Matthew, God’s word is generously scattered throughout all terrains, to every heart and soul. God’s word is a life-giving source of all creation that is Jesus as the new Moses, proclaiming the Beatitudes and the Father’s supreme commandment of love.

As one of seven parables in Chapter 13 of Matthew’s Gospel, the seed that is sown offers salvation for those who allow the word of God to take hold and grow. When God’s word – Jesus – is planted and fully received, there will be a great harvest of richness and abundance that was before never possible for man or woman. How truly blessed are those who listen to the word of God and allow him as the full expression of God’s promise to be a life-giving source for our lives.

In a world still morbidly transfixed by violence, blood, conflict, war and death, Jesus as the word of the Father offers us unimaginable hope. It is hope not found in disorder, turmoil or fatalities, but a hope emblazoned on our souls at baptism and revealed in our every utterance, prayer, petition, intercession and exhortation offered at the celebration of the Eucharist. “In the beginning was the Word. … What came to be through him was life and this life was the light of the human race” (Jn 1:1,3b).

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