16th Sunday of Ordinary Time

 

The Garden of our souls

The true Garden is not the Garden of Eden,

But our souls.

When God made the Garden of Eden,

He sowed the seeds of beautiful plants and trees of every kind.

Then God took the clay of the earth and “breathed” His Spirit into it,

And sowed the seeds of Love, Peace and Harmony in the souls of Adam and Eve.

But then the devil came along and with the consent of Adam and Eve

Sowed the seeds of pride and disobedience in their souls.

And then Cain watered them with the blood of his brother Abel.

And ever since then The Garden of our souls is now a mix of wheat and weeds;

Of Vice and Virtue

Of holiness and sin.

Like any garden if you don’t weed it on a regular basis,

The weeds overtake it.

Over time the weeds grow and deepen and become difficult to uproot.

Our souls are a Garden that must be weeded regularly as well.

Or they are overtaken by the weeds of pride, envy, selfishness and anger.

At first these sins seem small;

Nothing to bother with.

But they grow and take root

And soon become part of the Garden of our lives.

And so we need to go to Mass and Confession to do a little spiritual weeding in the Garden of our souls.

At the beginning of every Mass,

We recall our sins;

Those weeds that have entered our hearts the past week that need to be uprooted.

But some weeds go deep;

Such as Resentment, anger, hurt, pride, selfishness.

And Confession is for those hard to uproot sins.

The ones that we have let go for too long.

But once we dig them up;

Our souls become the Garden they were always meant to be.

A Garden of love, peace and harmony.

And then our world becomes the Garden it was meant to be as well.