Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

After the wettest winter ever on record in Seattle, the past month of sunny days and cool nights has been a dream. We have gone from a boggy spring into straight-on but mild summer. I won’t lie to our visitors and say it’s always this way. We just wish it were.

With the drying out of the soil, it’s high gardening season. There’s a lot to do, of course; scraggly bushes need their annual haircut, dead limbs want to be lopped from trees, weeds need to be pulled and the first fading blooms of daisies and roses and snapdragons need to be deadheaded. It was too wet before, so now it’s time to haul out the bags of compost, and do some serious digging.

Therein lies the difficulty, at least in my garden in front of Arrupe House at SU. The house is built on a clay shelf at the top of First Hill. Dig down a foot, or in some places 6 inches, and you hit that shelf, as well as the construction debris: chunks of cement, rocks, and assorted stuff that was never cleaned out when the house was built 25 years ago. Roots grow into sideways webs, not down, and digging becomes full scale excavation with a pickaxe and long handled loppers to cut through the roots. Yet dig, amend the soil, water, and prune you must, if you want to have a beautiful summer and autumn garden.

We have all heard the parable of the sower a thousand times. Yet it remains true on the thousand and first hearing. The seed falls where it is broadcast; on the path, among the rocks, in the thorn bush, on rich soil, and grows or does not grow accordingly. The seed is the word of God sown into our hearts, into our very being. Yet into what kind of soil it falls depends on me, not on God alone. Remember that Adam and Eve’s first task, the very first human employment, was to work the garden God had given them; a newly evolved garden that had stones and thorns as well a good rich soil; a place that had clay shelves and construction rubble as well as deep loam, beset by the occasional slug and gopher, and one very troublesome snake.

Working the garden God has given to each of us is hard work. It requires us to muck around in the hidden, often muddy parts of our lives, to get our hands dirty. It gets us out of our desk chairs and down on all fours, creaky knees notwithstanding, to pull the weeds that choke and the stones that take up root-room, to haul the bags of compost and spread it around. It invites us to amend our lives, to cultivate that place where the seed can grow into something beautiful and fruitful. Sometimes that cultivation only requires a gentle hand; other times, a pickaxe to break up the clay and stones, and a pair of long handled loppers to cut through the tangled roots.

As any one of you who has tended a garden knows, that work is never done.  There is always something that needs to be pruned, or reshaped, another weed to pull, another rocky patch that needs to be cleaned out, another delicate plant that needs extra water or a stake to hold it up.

Today, in the depth of summer, the scriptures ask us to take stock of the garden patch God has given us: the garden patch of my life. Are there thorny places that need to be cleared out? If so, put on your gloves and get at it. Are there rocky places that need to be broken through to make root room for the seed of goodness to sprout? If so, get out the tools and get excavating. Is the soil tired, or infertile?  Amend it. Are there dead branches or clutter that keep the sunlight out? Get out the shears and start pruning.

In my experience, every summer there is a period of about three days when the garden looks terrific, when the bushes are perfectly trimmed and the flowers are all in bloom, when all is balanced and beautiful. Go out on the fourth morning, and there will be aphids on the roses, or a broken stalk that needs to be cut off, or a sprinkler that needs repair. The work is never done. And that’s why we come here: to receive nourishment, strength for the tasks ahead, and to savor a shot of God’s own Miracle Gro together.

Happy Gardening!

Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.