Flourish!

A Homily for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2025

My brother Tim loved things that grow and loved to help things grow. His knowledge of plant life and flowers, all of it largely self-taught, was expansive. His ability to get a burnt out plant to flourish; or a reticent blossom to bloom always amazed me. After his unexpected death, now nearly a year and a half ago, I remember saying in the homily for his funeral liturgy that my brother’s love for things that grow, and his dedication to helping things grow, was perhaps the surest sign that he was participating in the Life of God!

God’s desire for everyone of us is not that we should endure, tolerate, put up with, or just get through life. God’s desire for every single one of us is: to flourish!

Here’s a simple definition of the term, “Flourish,” it means: “to grow in a healthy, vigorous way as a result of a favorable environment.” The word “flourish” itself comes from a more ancient word meaning: to lengthen the stem of a flower, to blossom, bloom, grow.

The prophet Isaiah reminds us today that our bodies were meant to “flourish” like the grass, so that, as Jesus says in our gospel: “the harvest might be abundant!” And Jesus isn’t just concerned here about the quantity of Laborers for the Harvest, but more so for the quality of the Laborers for the Harvest. The harvest cannot be abundant if the Laborers themselves are not dedicated to flourishing. Jesus wants you and I to dedicate ourselves to things that grow; to helping things that grow. So we might participate in the Life of God!

And, as you may have noticed in that definition of the word “flourish” flourishing requires “a favorable environment.” And as St. Paul tells us in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians (6:2): Now is the favorable time! Now is the day of salvation!

We might look around and find ourselves stunned at the level of rancor in the world, anger, violence, war, and just regular everyday hate. So, we might say Now is not the favorable time to flourish. Well, with Jesus NOW is ALWAYS NOW! And Now is always the favorable time. Now is always the day of salvation.

St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians today, reminds us, we are all called to work daily for the New Creation that God is bringing about in us and once it is in us we must share it with others. We may feel all creation is being rent apart right before our eyes. But this is the fertile ground necessary for the Christian to thrive. This is the fertile soil we need to flourish like the grass.

We Christians, by our nature and our faith commitment, know the most favorable time to flourish is in times of adversity. We have the long-standing saying: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians.” And Jesus tells us point blank in the Gospel of John: “Unless a seed fall to the ground and die, it remains a single grain, but if it dies it brings about an abundant harvest.”

We must take up the words of St. Paul: “From now on, let no one make trouble for me; for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body.” Only bodies that bear the marks of Christ flourish. Meaning, strangely somehow, it is only in our suffering, our shared suffering, our compassion, that the New Creation can come about, that we can flourish as we were created to flourish and help others to do the same.

What was true for St. Paul remains true for all of us: we must be “crucified” to the world. Meaning: Don’t think you are on the side of Life, Flourishing, and a New Creation, if you confront the reality of the world with its own tools, weapons, attitudes, and violence. To be crucified to the world is to offer the world the kind of counter-programming that runs naturally in a Christian’s blood: To look about the world in its very real shambles and choose today, every day, to be on the side of things that grow; to say no to death and yes to the Life that rises up out of death. To flourish as God created us to.

Let me end with a suggestion for a simple spiritual practice; As we enter deeper into these summer days take a moment to look at your own garden, a friend’s garden, or the flowers and plants you might pass along the way and remember: Now is the favorable time. Now is the day of salvation. God desires all of us to flourish and to be a source of flourishing in our world.