Sunday Reflections

In 1812 a young boy, Louis Braille, was accompanying his father in the family leather shop when he suffered an accident that left him blind.  When he was older, his family sent him to a school for the blind in Paris.  At that time, the students read from huge books with the letters raised.  It was a slow process to feel the raised letters and read this way.  Then one day a retired French army officer, Charles Barbier, visited the school and introduced a method used by the army consisting of a series of holes to represent the letters of the alphabet.  However, this method as well was slow and limited.  Then Louis decided to develop his own method with raised dots – now known throughout the world as Braille.  Unfortunately, despite the importance of this invention it attracted little attention until after his death.  His contribution to the blind was not even mentioned in his obituary.

I thought of this story when I first read the gospel of this weekend.  Jesus speaks to us of the mustard seed, seemingly insignificant, but that grows into a great tree. The invention of Louis Braille also seemed insignificant in its beginning, but grew into a renowned communication tool that revolutionized the world of the blind. 

Jesus tells us that such is the kingdom of God.  It starts out small, seemingly insignificant, but grows and develops mysteriously, capturing our attention, and bearing fruit.  This has many applications in our life of faith.

Seeds of faith were planted in us at an early age.  Our parents shared their gift of faith with us, beginning in our Baptism.   As we grew and developed they shared the faith with us – introducing us to prayer, to worship, to the Word of God, and the values of the kingdom of God.  Other significant people in our lives like grandparents, godparents, and teachers influenced our early faith development.  As we were able to articulate and respond on our own – eventually as teens and adults – we were like that seed that had become a tree.  We were now ‘bearing fruit’ on our own!  We were now having an influence on the faith life of others – if we realized it or not.

Let us celebrate this Sunday this gift of faith we have, and commit ourselves to do all we can to share it with others.