Little things? Who cares!? Apparently, God does!

“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.” – St Thérèse de Lisieux: (1873 – 1897: French Discalced Carmelite nun and Doctor of the Church)

Gospel Text: (MK 4:26-34)

Jesus said to the crowds:

“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 through it all 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.”

He said,

“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.”

With many such parables

he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it.

Without parables he did not speak to them,

but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.

Most of us today have little in common with those farmers; yet these parables can powerfully resonate in our modern minds because we can still understand quite a lot about planting, watering and harvesting and somehow we sense through his words that God has planted something in our hearts that will not allow us to move completely away from him.

What is the Kingdom of God? It is «Jesus himself» as Pope Benedict XVI reminds us. And our soul «is the essential location of the Kingdom of God». God wants to live and grow inside us. If we seek God's wisdom and obey his commands our life will become as steady as a rock and acquire a power that we can barely imagine.


If we patiently correspond to his grace his divine life will definitely grow in our soul the way seed grows in the field or as the German Dominican Friar, Eckhart von Hochheim O.P has beautifully expressed: «The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer and a diligent field hand, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be the result of God. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seed into God».