St. Bede-St. Denis Parish Home

Dear brothers and sisters:

 

I would like to share with you that during my recent trip to Peru, I experienced something meaningful. With the wisdom that comes with age and the common sense of simple people, a good friend came up to me and said: “You know, Alejandro? It often happens to me that when I hear advice like the kind you have given us about the things we should change in our lives, I immediately begin to think: ‘Look, this would be so good for so-and-so, and what he said over there fits perfectly for someone else.’ And so, I spend the whole talk handing out advice about what others should change, and I lose the opportunity to look at myself.”

 

I have kept that spontaneous conversation in my memory because it clearly reflects the attitudes that prevent the good within us from developing. We spend our energy giving opinions about what others do, complaining about how bad things are going, or lecturing about what should be done so that everything will be better. And, for one reason or another, the strength we must do good in a concrete and real way ends up being weakened because of our complaints, criticisms, or sterile pessimism.

 

Jesus taught us that the world is like a field where wheat and weeds grow together. Good and evil are mixed in daily life, and what is expected of the followers of Jesus is not to spend the whole day complaining about the existence of the weeds or about the attitudes and behaviors of others. Those who take the Gospel seriously should not waste time lamenting but rather assume their mission in life: to be leaven so that the dough may rise, to generate unity instead of discord, and to live with the simplicity we have learned from those people who seem to do nothing yet are deeply missed when they are no longer with us.

 

We are called to be wheat, leaven, and ferment through the concrete details of life. Happiness and goodness are not built through grand theories, but through simple, daily gestures of love. We cannot allow evil to have the last word. The only way to overcome resentment, hatred, envy, and any manifestation of the weeds planted in the field of life is through concrete and sincere gestures of forgiveness and love. I am convinced that many things could change in our lives if we accepted our mission to be humble, discreet, invisible, yet constant and persevering leaven.

 

It will not be difficult for us to think of concrete things in our lives, in our personal relationships, and in entrenched situations that hurt us and could be resolved if, instead of complaining or shifting responsibility elsewhere, we made Jesus’ teaching our own: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until the whole batch was leavened.” 

 

Happy Sunday!

 

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