There was a huge garden in my previous parish. Most of it was well kept but there was a strip of ground totally overgrown by all sorts of weeds and entangled thorny shrubs, making it impassable and impenetrable. Which was rather unfortunate as the Catholic school on the other side of the adjoining low wall would have loved to use it for its pupils. The aforementioned wall had already been equipped with a gate but the thorny mini-jungle rendered the strip hopelessly unusable. And then a determined gardener turned up. Over a few weeks, he methodically worked through the shrubs and weeds, leaving behind the clear ground. His parting advice after he’d finished was: ‘to clear the ground completely of weeds plant potatoes.’ There you go; this is the connection with last Sunday’s sermon…
In which I presented a rather gloomy assessment of our inability to experience God’s fatherly and unconditional love for each one of us. We are sinners, hopelessly inclined towards evil, consequently producing the disgusting crop of selfishness and sinful acts despite our best intentions and goodwill. Although we cannot change ourselves, all is not lost. This bleak situation of ours isn’t the end of this story. God in his love for you decided to act. Those who attended Mass last Tuesday, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, heard God’s first promise to sort it out when he addressed the serpent: ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’ (Genesis 3:15) Satan, represented by the serpent, would eventually be defeated. That first, initial promise was followed by more, gradually growing into more specific shape and form. Today’s first reading described the core mission of God’s messenger: ‘He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up hearts that are broken; to proclaim liberty to captives, freedom to those in prison; to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.’ Jesus applied this pronouncement to himself while publicly speaking in the synagogue in Nazareth: ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ (Luke 4:21) Jesus is the fulfilment of God’s promises. Born of a woman, the Son of God became man, the woman’s offspring destined to crush the head of the serpent. Satan’s power over us was broken and death conquered by Jesus on the cross. Like the gardener from my opening story, Jesus carried out all the hard work, getting rid of all the weeds and thorns that grew in our hearts. What remains is fertile yet empty soil. What to do with that? ‘Plant potatoes.’
‘To clear the ground completely of weeds plant potatoes.’ When the gardener told me that I assumed that potatoes by their specific properties would kill off any remnants of the weeds and stop new ones from growing. I duly bought and planted good quality potatoes, following the gardener’s instructions and soon fresh potato sprouts sprang up from the ground alongside fresh weeds that grew even more enthusiastically… Only then I learnt that planted potatoes would get rid of weeds because they required regular care. Potatoes had to be earthed up and, in the process, the weeds were removed. Rather unexpectedly I had a new hobby for the summer…
Jesus has done all the hard work to set you free. Now it’s your responsibility to keep it that way. Your response to the great gift of freedom is tending the fertile soil of your heart to keep it free from the weeds of sin and to help it grow virtues. In other words, your response is to trust God, believe Him and follow His plan of love for you, concisely prescribed in the Ten Commandments and developed in the teaching of Jesus. The potatoes you need to plant are the word of God. Read it, listen to it, meditate on it, reflect on it – these are the spiritual equivalents of earthing up potatoes. In the process, you will gradually get rid of the remnants of bad habits and desires, helping to grow a great crop of good deeds.
Image by Wolfgang Ehrecke from Pixabay