PARISH NEWS

SOCIAL MASS MEDIA!

Do we listen to the Word of God proclaimed at Mass? Why does Jesus teach in parables? Can’t he just announce his message as a seventeen second grab like a news item?

But God’s Word is rarely on social media and secular media platforms, which we might have in the background. Jesus tells us we need to do more than just listen to twitter or the daily news. Hopefully the increasingly crazy news will slide right off us; we might latch on to an item that interests us, but it is not that important. It doesn’t really have implications for us. There will be another twist in an hour or instant anyway.

When the people of God listen earnestly and openly to the proclamation of His Word, it washes around and through us. We are at one with Abraham and his descendants in our Old Testament reading as they strive to understand and make sense of God’s Word. We are with Paul and the earliest Christians as they live and explore the Christ event, which some of them have personally experienced, and which has profoundly affected them all. Particularly the parables such as in today’s gospel (Matt 13:1-23) are Jesus’ teaching for us.

Jesus identifies four categories of hearer, from those crowds interested in quick fixes and spectacles to those who are tripped up when life gets difficult and those who are distracted by worldly concerns and finally those who allow God’s Word to connect with their hearts. Jesus first disciples didn’t pretend to have all the answers but with their hearts they had certainty in the advent of God’s Kingdom in and through Jesus. Scripture speaks of those who “understand with their hearts (rather than their media attuned brains) and be converted, and I would heal them” (Is 6:10 ).

When we sit at his feet, yearning to go more deeply into the truth of the Kingdom, we are listening with our hearts and this is what Jesus asks of us.

Deacon Mark Kelly