16th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
July 23, 2023

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

As you know, this week, the Holy Father Pope Francis gave us the great gift of appointing four new auxiliary bishops for the family of God in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

All four of our bishop-elects are local priests, you may know of some of them —  Msgr. Albert Bahhuth, Father Matthew Elshoff, OFM Cap., Father Brian Nunes, and Father Slawomir Szkredka.

So, let’s give thanks to God today and pray in a special way for the Holy Father for this great blessing of new bishop-elects.

And let’s pray for them — for the new auxiliary bishops as they prepare for their ordination, which will be held here at the Cathedral on September 26. Let’s keep them especially in our prayers at this time.

Turning to our readings, in the Gospel that we just heard, as I was mentioning before, our Lord continues to reflect in parables on the meaning of the kingdom of God and how his kingdom grows and spreads, in our lives and in our world.

As we reflected last Sunday, Jesus has planted “seeds” — seeds of grace and the love of God — in our hearts and in our souls in baptism. And as we grow, he wants his divine life to grow within us.

Jesus wants our lives to be “rooted” in his life; he wants us to live from him and for him. So that as we grow, we become more and more like him.

We are the “good seed” that Jesus is talking about in the Gospel that we just heard today.

We are the children of the kingdom that he has planted in “his field,” the earth that he wants to transform into the kingdom of heaven.

This first parable that he gives us today is about the state of the world, and our place in the world, the place of the Church.

Jesus wants our lives to bear fruit for his kingdom. And yet we find ourselves, as Jesus points out, in a world that is full of “weeds."

The “weeds” in the parable today represent the evil in the world; the lies and false promises; the forces in society that are opposed to the Gospel.

Jesus explains that the weeds are sown by his enemy, the devil. “While everyone was asleep his enemy came,” Jesus says.

The enemy works when good people fall asleep — and also when we don’t live our faith with joy and confidence in everything we do; when we don’t stand up when God’s truth is challenged. That’s when the “weeds of the world,” its values and priorities, start to grow — in our hearts and in the society we live in.

This is how the saints have always read this passage of the Gospel.

But then Jesus also gives us hope today. He tells us to have faith, God is in charge! At the harvest the Lord will sort out the good from the bad.

God’s kingdom is growing silently, quietly, like seed in the earth. That’s the meaning of the second parable that he tells us today. He says the Church, the true faith, is like a tiny “mustard seed” that will grow into the greatest of trees, its branches stretching wide and gather people from every nation.²

So my brothers and sisters, we always should have confidence: God will have the victory. Our job is not to worry about the “weeds.” Our job, our vocation, is to stay faithful and to stay strong, to trust Jesus and keep following the straight path that he sets for our lives.

And that’s the meaning of that third parable that Jesus gives us this morning.

As Catholics, he tells us, we are called to be “yeast.”

Yeast works from within the dough, it transforms everything from the inside out. And it happens almost without anybody noticing.

And this is a beautiful image for our mission as disciples.

As Catholics, we are called to serve Jesus from within the world — in our professions, our ministries, in our vocations ,in our homes and in society.

So the Kingdom of God on earth grows through you and me, in hidden ways that no one sees. In the kindness that we show to a stranger, in the little acts of love and sacrifice that we make in our families.

So Jesus is calling us to change the world through the way that we live. He is calling us to plant seeds with our lives, seeds of peace and joy, seeds of love and understanding. Wherever we go, and whatever we are doing.

And that includes doing that even for those who are not on our side — those who oppose the Church and the Gospel. We need to work for their conversion, too.

And as we can think of how that happens in the world. I think it’s easy for us to think about how the Church started.  Eleven disciples and the Blessed Mother in an upper room in Jerusalem. That was the beginning of the Church. And they were totally opposed by the society around them. Just believing in Jesus was a threat to their safety, their lives. And yet from the first Pentecost, they went out and changed the world.

St. Paul tells us in the second reading today that the Holy Spirit is still at work in our lives and in the world: “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness … he intercedes for the holy ones, according to God’s will.”

These are such beautiful words of hope for us!

And we can see the beauty of our Christian vocation. We are called to bring the beauty of the truths of God to the people of our time.

So, my dear brothers and sisters, just reflecting on how if God is with us, we have nothing to fear, who can be against us?³ So, we should go with confidence and joy, proclaiming Jesus in everything we do, even in the midst of the “weeds” and obstacles that we encounter in our lives, and in the world.

Jesus is still growing his kingdom, still accomplishing his will on earth as in heaven. And he is growing his kingdom and accomplishing his will, through you and through me.

It’s a beautiful vocation, today especially as we reflect on God’s plan for the world — we have to give thanks to God for our Christian vocation because we have the beauty of knowing what God wants for each one of us and for the world.

And finally today, we remember, in a special way, those who helped us to grow in our faith, our grandparents and elders, as I mentioned before this is World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, as declared by the Holy Father Pope Francis.

Let us especially thank God today for their presence and their influence in our lives, and let us ask Holy Mary, our Blessed Mother to wrap them tightly in the mantle of her love and protection, and bring all of us together to the heavenly kingdom.

And let us ask for the grace to renew our commitment to be faithful disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ and renew our apostolic desire to bring the good news of the Gospel to the people of our time.