01/08/2023

Over the years that I have tried to live in accordance with the teachings of the Church I have never paid much attention to Moses and the wandering people of God. So today, in trying to understand how Joshua could stay in the Tent of Meeting, I have come to realise for the first time that the "wandering" in the desert was not a daily event. They did not wake up each morning, strike camp and move to another location then pitch their tents again. 

Very much like modern day Bedouin they would exhaust the pasture and other resources of a location and then move on. Over time they would come to know fertile places in the desert where they would scatter seed, leaving it to grow  in God's Providence. They would then return to this locality to either harvest this seed or leave it as fodder for their flocks. The people I have met who have grown up in this environment are usually tough as nails and afraid of nothing and nobody. "Self-contained" or "Stiff-necked" is not an inappropriate adjective to use of them but they are never rude.

The crowds who listen to Jesus and at times smother him by their demands and presence are a settled people. Their forefathers were the Israelites of the desert. The tent of meeting had evolved into the Temple and local schools, the synagogues. Jesus was able to teach in these urban locations but his parables are often created to appeal to the folk memory of his listeners.

Jesus has completed his mission as sower of the seed. In addition to sowing us into this world he has also ensured our growth with his blood. He has left us to grow in the fertility of God's Providence with the support of his grace but we do this in freedom and not straitjacketed by predestination as St Augustine avers. The seeds of the parable will, indeed, be unable to change their DNA but the souls that they represent, we on earth, can turn to and away from the Sower, as they will.

Fear of Hell often consumed the being of the child that I was. It has taken a lifetime of sin, repent and sin again to realise that there is nothing to fear about death for it is merely a transition to a bodiless spiritual condition where God is everything. May Mary help me to be welcomed into what she and all the saints know. May my atonement be full and my prayers sincere thus emptying myself of all pride and selfishness.