12 July 2026 #lookupchild
A chance encounter a few weeks ago reminded me of the readings today. Each Sunday I depart Hastings and head over to my Mom’s Assisted Living facility to spend some time with her. There’s a homeless population that frequents the main corridor off the freeway, the local mall I pass has been in foreclosure once or twice, and the new housing in the area are all rental units. My Mom’s place overlooks a pond between a bustling local library on one side and a delightful little tree-lined condo neighborhood on the other. It’s a genteel oasis in the midst of a community under duress.
As I found myself at a red light with my windows up on an unseasonably cool morning, I heard a truck approaching. I actually didn’t hear the truck. I heard the man behind the wheel screaming profanities at someone on the other end of his phone. As he pulled up beside me, his language and anger were beyond pale. Animal-like. Cruel. I was reminded of what St. Paul kept at bay in his letter to the good people of Rome today: the ‘futile corruption of slavery’ and ‘the groaning of suffering.’ My friend in the car beside me was corrupted by anger, screaming through a suffering that had no hope.
If the Gospel life had ever been presented to this man, it bore no fruit in that moment. After recovering from the shock of hearing such vitriolic anger, I said a prayer for him and whoever was on the receiving end of his verbal violence.
We have the time-honored parable of The Sower for us to ponder this week. It’s fairly straightforward, yes? Where are we on the path? At one end, are we fully open to receiving the graces offered and direction given from the Lord? Or at the other end, are we fully closed to any grace and live a life devoid of heavenly interference? Or somewhere in between? It’s an easy pondering question. But ‘easy’ is not a word Jesus wants us to be.
What is far more thought-full is Jesus’ reply to the why-speak-in-parables question. Jesus says that his hearers look but they do not see and hear but do not listen. Quoting Isaiah, he strikes at the heart of the matter: “lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and be converted, and I heal them.”
Ouch. No matter where we are on our seed-and-sower-path, we often times do not want to see, do not want to hear, do not want to understand with the heart and be converted… because we do not want to move forward. We are attached to our excuses, our sins, our woe-is-me attitude. We need something to complain about, someone to blame, and a reason to lose our temper or be unhappy. We like where we are on our path. We’re justified, after all. We don’t want to be healed. Like my angry friend at the red light, so focused on his self-righteous-rage, he wasn’t open a different way of responding, an alternative point of view, or even to move past his anger issues.
In pondering today’s readings, we shouldn’t look down at the ground to see what kind of shape it’s in. We should see with the eyes of our heart and hear with the sound of our soul in order to risk looking up to the Lord to find the healing path we all must follow. #lookupchild