Reading 1
This word of the LORD came to me:
Go, cry out this message for Jerusalem to hear!
I remember the devotion of your youth,
how you loved me as a bride,
Following me in the desert,
in a land unsown.
Sacred to the LORD was Israel,
the first fruits of his harvest;
Should any presume to partake of them,
evil would befall them, says the LORD.
When I brought you into the garden land
to eat its goodly fruits,
You entered and defiled my land,
you made my heritage loathsome.
The priests asked not,
“Where is the LORD?”
Those who dealt with the law knew me not:
the shepherds rebelled against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal,
and went after useless idols.
Be amazed at this, O heavens,
and shudder with sheer horror, says the LORD.
Two evils have my people done:
they have forsaken me, the source of living waters;
They have dug themselves cisterns,
broken cisterns, that hold no water.
Gospel
The disciples approached Jesus and said,
“Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?”
He said to them in reply,
“Because knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven
has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.
To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich;
from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
This is why I speak to them in parables, because
they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.
Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:
You shall indeed hear but not understand,
you shall indeed look but never see.
Gross is the heart of this people,
they will hardly hear with their ears,
they have closed their eyes,
lest they see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts and be converted
and I heal them.
“But blessed are your eyes because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
longed to see what you see but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
This morning, I want to start my reflection by reminding us, what we learnt many years ago in Economics. (You are free to see me as an economics teacher).
In economics, there is what is called “law of diminishing returns” or “principle of diminishing marginal productivity.
It states that if one input in the production of a commodity is increased while all other inputs are held fixed, a point will be reached at which additions of the input yield progressively smaller or diminishing output.
A simple lay man’s example is, for instance, a land that is yielding 95% at the first instance of the usage when the farmer continues to use it, employs more labourers, add more fertilizers on the same portion of land, over the years, the output of the land will decrease.
These diminishing returns are not just a term in economics, it has a wider application and relevance. It tells us something fundamental about human life and experience.
Many are those who started well in life but ended badly. Many are doing well before (spiritually, morally, financially, academically) but along the line, things took a different twist.
In today’s first reading, we see a good example of diminishing returns. In this case, it is not the fault of the divine production manager.
The Lord indicts the people of Israel in this manner;
Thus says the Lord, I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness…Israel was holy to the Lord…and I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits… but when you came in, you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.”
God gave Israel all the necessary factors for a good and increasingly productive relationship with Him, Israel flourished for a while but over time, she allowed some negative intervening variables. Hence, it gradually diminished in the overall spiritual productivity.
Dear friends, let us move from economics to practical reality. Let us think about our journey in life, how did I start with God? Where am I today?
Again, let us examine other aspects of our lives and see whether our productivity has diminished.
As a married man/woman- how did you start with your spouse? Where are you today? Where is that burning love that brought you together? Has time and togetherness strengthened your bond or that bond has diminished or even disintegrated?
My life as a priest, I remember how it was on my ordination day, the rich admonition by the bishop, how we prostrated in humble prayers, the litany, the laying of hands and words of consecration, the anointing, the priestly vestments for the first time and the assignments we are called upon to perform, the promise to pray the office, how far today?
Remember your love, emotion, zeal and passion, when you took your priest profession of vows, where is that love?
Can you recall when you received the first Holy Communion for the first time, the love, the piety, and then see?
Remember when you resolved to surrender to Jesus, remember how you once despised some sins and are worried about those who engage in them.
There are some of our youths now, they were once pious, following their parents to mass, they learnt to pray the rosary at a tender age, some were altar servers and legionaries, innocent looking and God loving but now they have outgrown spirituality and are now lost in rascality and moral absurdity.
Some of you here, you were once very prayerful, very spiritual, you had passion for God, you were having spiritual gifts and religious experience before, you dream and they happen, you pray more constantly in the spirit, you were once seeing the blessed virgin Mary and your heavenly friends…but now its a different story, you are in a spiritual wilderness.
Some of us have become like those that the gospel of today
reprimand. Those who have eyes but no longer see, ears but no longer hear, they have minds but are now incapable of understanding.
This is what happens when we abandon our first love and allow the distraction of life to gradually severe us from God.
Hear this judgment against the Church in Ephesus (Rev 2:4-5);
4 you have lost the love you had at first.
5 Realize how far you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
I will not fail to remember the great saints we celebrate today- Ss’ Joachim and Anne, we got to know them through the proto-evangelism of St James (An Apocryphal writing), the most important fact we know about them is that they were worthy parents and they gave the world someone worthy to be the Mother of the Saviour of the world, someone who restored the confidence of God that was lost in Eve.
Through their intercession, May God help you and I to restore the love, zeal, gift and spiritual productivity, vitality and sensitivity that might have been diminished in us, Amen.
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Okami of Ilorin Diocese, Kwara State, Nigeria on July 27, 2018