FIFTEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
16 July 2017
Homily
She rises each day at 5 am in her tiny prison cell.
She spends the first hour of her day in prayer, and then begins her rounds of the prison cells.
She brings clothing, soap, blankets to prisoners.
She is not the warden, She is not one of the guards, she is a nun,
who lives in the prison spending 10 hours a day visiting prisoners.
Her life didn’t start out pointed in this direction.
She grew up in Beverly Hills–Dinah Shore and Cary Grant were her neighbors.
She has raised 7 children and lived through two marriages, the second ending in divorce.
She eventually sold all her belongings and moved to Mexico and joined an order of sisters
who worked with the poor.
She eventually convinced the warden
of one of Mexico’s most dangerous prisons in Tijuana,
to let her stay at the prison and began the dangerous task
of doing small acts of kindness for the prisoners.
Two people have written a book about her which they have entitled: “The Prison’s Angel.”
As I read her story in the context of today’s gospel I wondered,
Is she the sower or is she the seed?
Does she in fact spread the gospel?
Or is she the small seed which grows confirming that the gospel is alive?
It’s hard to tell, maybe she is both.
That of course leads me to the important question of the day.
What am I?
Am I the sower? Am I the seed?
Am I none of these things but only a hard and rocky place where the gospel has been planted?
The power of the parables of Jesus lies in this fact, that we are each to find our place in them.
Are you the sower? Are you the seed? Are you the hard and rocky ground?