SLOW  AND  SILENT

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 3^rd Friday in Ordinary Time  is, “Slow and Silent.”

Much of life is slow and silent.

That’s not us at times - especially when we are running and rushing, gabbing and gossiping - doing life - like we see people doing mad shopping every year on TV - on Black Friday - or how some people do Super Bowl Sunday.

Slow and Silent - that’s more like the pace of people driving the streets of Heritage Harbor - or moving along on the corridors a nursing home.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s gospel gave me this thought and theme - as well as the title of this homily: “Slow and Silent.”

Jesus tells two parables….

The first tells the story of the farmer spreading seed on the dirt of the earth.

Listen to Jesus again:

"This is how it is with the Kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear,

then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe,

he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come." [Mark  4: 26-29]

Listen to Jesus again in his second parable for today:

"To what shall we compare

the Kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that,

when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds

on the earth.
But once it is sown,

it springs up

and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky

can dwell in its shade." [Mark 4:30-32]

The plant world can teach us these lessons.

Slow and silent - plant life is inching upwards and outwards and rooting downwards.

Slow and silent - like the snow most of the time.

Snow falls slowly - well not always - and the yard becomes white.

Paint peels slowly - so too rust - so to milk going bad.

So too skin - the slow wrinkling  of our skin.

So too cancer - the creeping slow killer.

Band-Aids lift, lose their grip, itch, and silently scream, “Change me!”

Bread rises slowly….

Wine ferments gradually.

So too love - and the 25^th and 50^th anniversary happens.

So too the slow of sorrow and of death - hopefully 4 score and twenty at least for all of us.

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “Slow and Silent” - the way Jesus’ words slowly make their way into the fiber of our being and our thoughts.