Whenever any major political event happens occurs, it appears to have happened overnight. Even when a candidate comes out of the blue and suddenly appears to become popular that is just perception. Such things have their beginnings years if not decades before. For example, many will tell you that Barack Obama came out of Chicago suddenly and became the president in a rather quick series of events beginning in 2007. Au contraire mon ami. Did you know that Barack Obama gave one the main speeches at the Democratic party convention in Boston in 2004? You can say at least in 2004 and I will tell you long before, there was a machine in place to put him in the White House in 2008. Nothing was overnight.

When you understand that, you can begin to see patterns and start extrapolating events that most likely will occur barring failure of well laid plans. For example, the US Catholics Bishops were caught off guard when the Health Care Reform Act of 2010 mandated that Catholic institutions pay for contraceptives and abortion which are grave sins against life. That is because the bishops do not pay attention to the principle I  laid out above in my homily and they unnecessarily get caught off guard. In 2002, people who understand how this system works not only could have told the bishops that this was coming, they did, and the bishops did not listen.

When Ireland voted in favor of gay marriage a couple weeks ago, it would appear to be an overnight change. It was not, I am sure that was in the works for at least twenty years or more. This is the way the system works.

One of my favorite movies is Avatar. Granted it reflects a pantheistic system that existed in our world prior to the Christian evangelizaton, but it also reflects a truth about industry. Industry by definition is focused on production and profits. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but, long before industry gets all idealistic, it also becomes practical. The idealistic comes in when profits are least affected. If profits are affected then the idealistic goes away, and this was illustrated well in Avatar. The company had to move the indigenous population because they were in the way of great profits. Therefore, when you see huge corporations stand up for rights and equality, know that there is a profit motive behind it. Why, because that is the way industry works. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, just a reality. Stockholders do not care of ideals if they are losing money.

I should note here, we are not talking about some guy who lives in a huge mansion on a hill who looks down upon us poor people who care about ideals. We are talking about people who know that your job and your retirement funds and your future retirement rely on him making the most profitable decisions to ensure your retirement is funded. Idealism will not fund your retirement, profits do.

Right now, the Catholic Church’s teachings on abortion, stem cell research, cloning, etc. are seen as obstacles to people’s goals for this society. So those forces that see us standing in the way of things like progress and great profits want us to be silent. If I preach nothing but fluff, a lot of people who hate Catholics will love me. Why? They do not want the Catholics in the way of them reaching their goals and if we remain silent, they will be happy and we will live in one big falsely peaceful dictatorship. But who are we? We are the representatives of God’s kingdom on this Earth which calls us to think at a higher level of wisdom. Those who disagree with us and try to silence us because we stand in the way of what they feel is the source of true liberty, whereas we are fully aware that they are wrong and do not know it yet.

When we as human beings understand and do God’s will, we thrive better than we do if we reject God and focus on profits and progress. When we reject God’s will  instead we thrive for a time and then our human nature and the spiritual forces that seek to destroy humanity get in the way and that is when destruction happens. Well, people say that if God existed why isn’t the world perfect. However, no says that if humans were all capable of doing the good thing, why have we not created Utopia. Many are concerned about why churches are closing and what is happening. The reason is obvious, we turned our focus away from being God’s servants to being good people in the world regardless of what we truly believe.

The result is simple, those who have been working for decades to silence the Church in order to make their wordly goals have been empowered. They are now about to go full throttle against the church. That is where we come to today’s gospel.

In the parable of the mustard seed, we see that this little seed grows to become not only a great tree, but a powerful bush that becomes a home for even the birds. Look carefully. Do you know that mustard seeds are also bird food? The same seed that becomes the great fruitful tree also is eaten by birds and never bears fruit. What is Jesus saying?

We as Catholics have been called to be the sign to the world that humans do not have the answers to the greatest realities in our universe. We need to hear the wisdom of God and do God’s will and we will as God says be exalted to heights that are beyond our imagination. The God who created the tree, also gave us the minds to create a  colony on Mars and a satellite that sends pictures from Pluto, literally. If we do God’s will, there is no end to where God will show us the fruits of our existence.

If we as a race reject God and exalt ourselves we will follow the same path of every society that did the same thing and each one failed miserably.

The greatest problem our parish has right now is that many feel that their Catholic faith is an option that is because they never saw a reason to live it. Your weekly commitment to do nothing more than just be the Catholic Christ called you to be at baptism, to pray daily, to know scripture and let all of that affect the way you live your life is not only the future of our parish, but also of true life. How many people who know the faith well know what evil is and how to avoid it? Pretty much all of them. They may embrace sin, but do so fully aware of what they are doing. Those who reject God walk right into the path of evil through different forms of sin and then commit other sins to get out of the net of evil. They find themselves deeper and deeper in that net of sin. That is the reality of sin.

However, behind the scenes there is the power of God, who cannot be silenced by those forces that seek progress and profits. God’s kingdom will come. You are representatives of that Kingdom, never give up. Our opponents will never stop trying to silence us, until they discover their goals resulted in huge miscalculations. However, as much as they try, they cannot stop God’s will and His Kingdom. They can only stop you by convincing you that they are more powerful than God, like telling you that a mustard seed has no chance of surviving into a mustard tree. God will beg to differ.

Those who commit to reject God and silence His Church in the name of progress and profits will become like the many societies that followed the same path including Babylon, Canaan, Palenque and Palmyra.

Commit everyday in faith to live the Gospel and your future is, as St. Paul says: more than eye has seen and ears heard.