Buen Camino

 Unfulfilled Goal - Walk the Camino

I love to hike, wander and explore - so it should come as no surprise that one of my unfulfilled goals in life is to take a summer and walk the Camino de Compostela in Spain - which is an ancient pilgrimage route across the Pyrenees Mountains to the tomb of St. James.  

Credencial - Passport - Waypoints on your journey

To walk the Camino you obtain a “Credencial” - a Pilgrim’s passport that is stamped by the various places that one stays along the way.  It is like a passport that is a record of your journey.  The Credencial identifies you as a pilgrim, someone on the way.  The invitation to live in the Kingdom of God is an invitation to live ordinary life in an extraordinary way.

Camino - Blending of Adventure and Faith

I first learned of the Camino when I saw the movie “The Way” which is the story of a father (Tom) who travels to Europe to bring home the body of his son, and decides to take up the way so his son can complete the way.  As he goes from town to town Tom is encouraged by others whom he meets who wish him a “Buen Camino” - which means something like “May you have a good (i.e. blessed) journey.  

Describing the kingdom vs Showing the kingdom

In the Gospel of Mark the parables that we hear today how Jesus describes what the Kingdom of God is like.  For the most part, up until this point in the Gospel Christ has been showing others the fruits of the Kingdom of God - He frees people from demonic slavery, he heals them and he calls them to follow Him, He invites them to an adventure of faith.

The Kingdom of God is a life of faith

You will not fully understand how it works, but you know what to do, how to act and then trust that God is pouring His grace into your life.  That is why he likens it to the farmer who plants the seed and then watches the effect in our lives.  

• At first the seed lies “dead” in the earth.  Your faith might not yet feel effective - but God’s grace is at work 

• then a shoot springs up, 

• then the ear forms, 

• then the seed forms in the ear 

• then the ear is harvested and the faith that you have been given is to nourish those around you.

Christs plan to evangelize the world

Wrapped up in this parable is Christ’s plan to evangelize the world - he will share his faith with those who have the chance to know him, and to know the father through him - then generation after generation that faith is passed on - from parent to child and from child to grandchild.  Each generation when they die (are harvested), the witness of their relationship with God inspires (feeds) the next generation.

The seed is planted at Baptism and grows as we grow

The seed is planted in our lives at our baptism - which is the sacrament of faith.  It is nourished in our lives by experiences of faith - either in the sacraments, in prayer, or experiences and gradually, across the duration of our life our faith matures, ripens, and becomes stronger. How that works is a bit of a mystery - that it works is clearly true - the fact that we are here today - worshiping God is witness to the kingdom of God being lived out throughout time.

Live by Faith - Not by Sight

In the second reading St. Paul admonishes us to “Live by Faith and not by Sight”.  This is his way of inviting us to live in the kingdom of God.  To live by faith is to live in the kingdom of God, to strive for communion with Christ and to imitate his love in all of our actions.   To live by sight is to simply live in the world - eat, sleep, work, repeat.  St. Paul uses this analogy to live only by what is clearly before you not seeing the deeper reality that the spiritual life calls us to.  

We live in a world of 3 cults

In many ways our culture today lives by sight - we have the “Cult of Fitness” - where the focus is you have only one life, optimize fitness at the expense of everything else.  We have the “Cult of Beauty” which idolizes the most beautiful, and if you were not created to be that way, you can pay a surgeon who can “fix” that.  We live in the “Cult of Celebrity” where we seek out fame, and the adoration of people who want to aspire to be an idol for others.  One of the impacts of social media is to permeate our lives with these ideas - 24 x 7 x 365.  

Yet, fitness fails, as we all grow old and die, we are not going to be very fit in the grave, and beauty fades, as we grow older, age takes a toll on our looks, and celebrity is fleeting, and eventually we will be forgotten.  These “Idols” do not last, they do not satisfy, and in a certain way they are empty.  That is what it means to live by sight.

Reject the cults - Have Courage

Paul calls us to “have courage”, to live by faith, to know that God is using all of the events of our lives to help us to understand and know His love.  This is what it means to live in the Kingdom of God - to know God’s love and to allow our experience of that love to strengthen us, shape us and through us to invite others into that same kingdom.

The Examen - ask when did I Live by sight? Live by Faith?

We choose to live in the kingdom of God when we recognize temptation in our lives and ask Him for the grace to overcome it, or when we ask Him for the grace to forgive us.  This is why daily recollection and frequent confession is one of the ways that we can choose to live in the kingdom of God.  St. Ignatius invited his brothers to make an examen at the end of each day to understand where in their day they “lived by sight” and in which moments we “lived by faith”.  The way it works is that at the end of the day you take some quiet time to reflect over the events of that day, asking the Holy Spirit to point out to you the times when you failed, fell into sin, or “lived by sight”.  You also ask the Holy Spirit to point out to you the moments in which you “lived by faith” and saw the witness of God’s love for you in your life.  

Making this a daily habit helps us to see the many ways in which God sends us His Grace.  It also makes receiving absolution at the foot of the cross in confession easy - because we are well aware of the ways the devil tries to incite us to defect and leave the kingdom of God.

God’s permissive will governs all - he brings good out of evil

There is a second part to this mystery of the Kingdom of God - and that is a profound trust that God’s purpose is found, not only in the good and joyful moments, but also in the difficult and painful moments of our lives.  The prophet Ezekiel speaks of this with his parable about the Cedar tree, that God will pluck and plant on the highest of mountains so that all trees will know that it is God who

bring low the high tree,

lift high the lowly tree,

wither up the green tree,

and make the withered tree bloom.

Our lives go from periods of consolation, to periods of desolation which are periods of growth and periods in which we are fallow.  The trick is to recognize them and to know (by faith) that God is working through both times.  After all, Christ made it clear that if we want to be His disciples we need to be willing to pick up our crosses and follow him.  The cross is never easy, and often brings us low and withers our life - just as the cross did with Christ.

The kingdom of God has the view that Death is not the end

But we know by faith, and by the witness of the Apostles that this was not the end for Christ, and is not the end for us.  That He was raised from the dead and conquered death.  In the same way too, our periods of desolation are necessary for us to grow in faith and in our relationship with God.  They are needed for us to be able to live more fully in the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God is like a Mustard Seed - Who is the rock of your life?

That brings us to the second parable about the kingdom of God - it is like a Mustard Seed, that is the smallest, most insignificant, most unnoticed of seeds.  If it is allowed to flourish it becomes the greatest of bushes, and all the birds of the air find their home in its branches.  Think about your family or the ones who have brought you the faith - who is the one in your family who is like a mustard seed, whose faith encompasses everyone in the family, and invites you to live in the Kingdom of God?  That is the sign of faith well lived - not publicly, but quietly, faithfully, persistently.  God loves that and blesses it to become an abundant faith.

Christ invites to the adventure of the Camino

This is the invitation of the Gospel today - Christ invites us to choose to live in the Kingdom of God.  Christ invites us to the adventure of the “Camino”, the way in which through our journey to meet the Lord.  We willingly embrace the kingdom of heaven with its joys and struggles because we know it leads us to a beautiful place - where we will be immersed in the love of God.

Buen Camino!