Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 16, 2023 - Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34

If I were to look for two words to describe the contrast in these two parables, it would be anonymity and surprise. Anonymity and surprise. One way of illustrating it is what I’m going to do next. I’m going to read you two lists. The first list is a list of some of the greatest evils produced by Christians or because of Christianity. The second list is some of the greatest good that was produced by Christians or because of Christianity. You will find that, sometimes, the same thing is in both lists.  

• The Great Heresies: That Jesus is not truly a man. That Jesus is not truly God. That we did not need salvation.  
• Constantine declaring the Christian Church should be the official and only legal church of the Roman Empire.  
• All the Crusades, but especially the sack of Constantinople and the destruction of Christian churches by Christian Crusaders.   
• The sins of the popes of the Middle Ages, especially their transfer of the papacy from Rome to Avignon and the evils of the House of Medici.  
• The Protestant revolt that tore the Christian face of Europe apart.  
• The Council of Trent, in reaction to the Protestant Reformation.  
• The collusion of the Catholic Church in the colonialization of indigenous peoples.  
• The popes of the 19th century declaring modernism to be a terrible heresy that Catholics could not engage in and creating a syllabus of forbidden books.  
• The questionable relationship between Pius XII and Nazi Germany.  
• The silencing of theologians all throughout the first half of the 20th century.
• And, finally, the clergy sex abuse scandal that has torn apart Catholicism at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. 

Now, the other list: 

• All the great early martyrs.  
• Constantine declaring the Church to be the official religion of the Roman Empire.  
• The crowning of Charlemagne and the creation of the Holy Roman Empire.  
• The great saints who created the religious orders: Benedict, who single handedly created monasticism, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jesuits.  
• The great mystics: Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila, Therese the Little Flower, Edith Stein.  The Council of Trent restoring order to Christianity and preserving what was best of the apostolic tradition. 
• The missionary thrust of the 18th and 19th century sincerely bringing the word of God to people who had never heard of Jesus.   
• The Missionaries defense of indigenous peoples against the inroads of commercialism and soldierism.  
• The great appearances of Mary at Tepeyac in Mexico, at Lourdes in France, at Fatima in Portugal, at Knock in Ireland.  
• In the midst of the controversy over modernism, the Great Pope St. Leo XIII issuing an encyclical taking the side of labor against runaway capitalism.   
• The rescue of Jews in monasteries and convents all over Europe and right in the Vatican itself, with the blessing of Pius XII.  
• The Second Vatican Council, which took all of the secret work of theologians for a half a century and blessed it and made it the official teaching of the Church.  
• Our modern popes, several of them saints: John the XXIII, a career diplomat, who could see beyond the daily, Paul VI, the first, the first traveling Pope, John Paul II.

The two lists go down the centuries and sometimes there’s crossover because, aside from the worst atrocities that Christians have committed, and aside from the most spectacular feats they have done, the rest of it was just workaday. People doing what they thought was right even if it turned out to be wrong. That’s what these Parables this morning are all about. 

One of our great theologians, Augustine, who came centuries before Bonaventure and Dominic, said this. “Pray as if everything depended on God. Work as if everything depended on you. Because both things are true, all the time.”