A homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Last year for the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Her symbol is the sunflower. We arranged flowers, put them on the altar platform and put some underneath the altar. The ones underneath the altar closed up and they were pretty. And I was wondering what’s going out. Why did this all close up? Were they faulty? And everyone said no, they’re sunflowers, that they don’t have light.
They close up. They have to be in the light to be open. And so, this year I tried it. I had sunflowers out, you know, in front of the window. And these are those sunflowers. Nice and bright, open, you know, big, big show of sunflowers. All open. And then I put some in a closet off the sacristy.
And these are then kind of closed and shut and not very open. This is my extension of today’s gospel, where Jesus is talking about seed on the path, amongst the thorns, amongst the thorny ground, the rocky ground and the good soil. And we don’t do too much seed, but we do flowers a lot. And so I’m thinking it could be extended to say we’re like sunflowers.
We are sunflowers. And so where do we where are we placed? Are we placed in the darkness of, of selfishness, the darkness of self? First this darkness of just sin and sin and error. Are we in the bright light of truth? Saint Teresa of Lisieux says. It is not we who illumine the light, but we who are illuminated and made bright by the light.
That’s the call I think of today’s gospel, is to place ourselves in the light so that we are made. We are shining in the light. We are bright in the light. Now this Thursday is the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Saint Titus brings us as her symbol is the sunflower. Remember, Carmel means garden of God.
So every saint has a flower associated her name to them. Mary’s is the sunflower because Titus says it follows the sun during the day and keeps its head down. And humility. That’s probably part of our call, is to be, follow the sun. We keep our head down a little bit in humility.
