Daily Gospel Reflection

The Fruit of Your Life

Welcome back to Radical & Relevant. I'm Matthew Kelly. We're exploring the genius of Catholicism, the genius of Jesus, his life and teachings in the gospel, and learning how to apply them to our everyday lives. As we listen to the Gospel today, remember you're looking for a word or a phrase, or an idea to focus on throughout your day. Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 4, verses 26-34, "And Jesus said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow. He knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once, he puts in the sickle because the harvest has come.' And Jesus said, 'With what can I compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall I use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. Yet when it is grown, it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.' And many such parables, Jesus spoke as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples, he explained everything."

So again, we have the sower going out and sowing. What's happening? He's doing something. And then there's a fruit from what he's doing. He doesn't understand the fruit, how it comes to be, but the fruit comes, the grain grows, first the blade, then the ear. And then we have the mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds growing into this massive tree, creating shades and branches for the birds to make their nests in. So what are we looking at here? What are we experiencing here? What's being challenged here? Well, for one thing, we ask ourselves, "Okay. Is our life being fruitful?" The sower goes out and he sows. He does something and there is a fruit of his work. And then in the second parable-- because sometimes we can think our work is just small, or our contribution to the kingdom is small, or that we can't really do a lot to evangelize.

So we do something small. And then we can feel small about that, or we can feel that that's not significant, or not important, or that it doesn't matter. And so Jesus is coming and saying, "That ain't true. Here's the mustard seed, smallest of them all, grows up, creates this great, huge tree with all of these branches." And that's all around us. I think about some of the people that impacted my faith in my childhood that got me on this journey. I wouldn't be sitting here today. Millions of people wouldn't have read my books and heard me speak. And all of that is the fruit of that mustard seed that somebody sow in me when I was a kid. They probably thought, oh, they're just doing something little. They couldn't see how it would grow, how it would expand.

I was with a guy yesterday. And he was one of 10 kids. And then he had four kids. And then they were having a family reunion of all of these people. It's like a mustard seed or the tree, right? All these branches, all these families, all these people, incredible fruit of that family. So what is the fruit of your life? How are you sowing the seed? How are you working in the kingdom? And what is the fruit that's coming about as a result of that? Have a great day. Don't just be yourself, be the very best version of yourself, all that God created you to be.