Friday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012712.cfm

A familiar site
to hikers at MSF

(The kingdom of God) is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade."

I suppose that, as a young priest-friar, I often came to the dinner table or the evening conversation with a hangdog look of frustration and disappointment. I say this because I remember hearing often statements like, "You never know. You might have done more good than you suppose." 

Perhaps Jesus' disciples were feeling the same way when he gave them his parables of the sleeping farmer and the mustard seed. 

Blessed John Duns Scotus, one of the greatest of Franciscan philosopher/theologians encouraged his friars with a similar teaching: Whereas the works we human beings do on our own are often frustrating and fruitless, the works we do in obedience to God are touched with infinite blessings. They contribute irresistibly to building the Kingdom of God. If their specific effects don't appear to the searching eye, their roots run deep beneath appearances. 

And that is what we're all about, not satisfying our own needs or accomplishing our own agenda but contributing to Jesus' work of salvation. 

To live by faith is to believe that Jesus' sacrificial life and death cannot be frustrated. It is to let all of our efforts be subsumed into his grand work. Furthermore, to live by faith is to allow my identity, so dear to me, to be dismissed and my name to be forgotten in preference to the Holy Name of Jesus. 

Revelations give us one such image: 

And whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives for ever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing,  ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God,   to receive glory and honour and power,for you created all things,   and by your will they existed and were created.’ (Revelations 4:9-11)

In the unlikely event I am given a crown for all my good works, I will certainly toss it on the massive pile before the Lamb of God, confident that he knows its worth.