A Reflection for the Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Priest
Find today’s readings here.
Far and away, the preeminent privilege of my working as a nurse has been to witness so many births. The first time I saw life come into the world, it changed my understanding of how we grow and get to where we are going. I remember riding on the New York City subway to go home afterward. Looking around at the many faces in the subway car traveling through different stages and ages of life, I realized that all the people there, young and old, were once, and not so long ago, like the newborn I met that afternoon. We each stepped from the platform into the car for both time and grace to show and tell that when it comes to venturing toward the Kingdom of heaven, each is well along and on the way.
The first time I saw life come into the world, it changed my understanding of how we grow and get to where we are going.
With a first infantile cry, as a spark to a flame, every passerby’s heart once ran off to the races. Your pulse, even now as you read this, is like an unbroken chain that beats back to a heart rate, from which before you came, you could never have foreseen to raise you like a mustard seed from soil to sky or a bowl of ingredients to the bread and body of Christ you imply.
Today the two parables of the mustard seed and the woman making bread focus on the Kingdom’s transformative end. Like yeast in wheat flour or seed beneath the soil, the Kingdom of heaven extends. Lain hidden from the foundation of the world is this marvelous potential for magis. Like you and your lifespan, Jesus says the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.
