Examples which are simply clear

The passage in the Roman Catholic Lectionary today from the Prophet Jeremiah causes Robert P. Heaney of Creighton University to ask “How are we doing as a people?”  He notes that sexual abuse of minors, discrimination, power grabbing, privilege-seeking, exclusiveness, money laundering are problems in the Church hierarchy. We believers live rampant individualism, widespread social injustice, structural poverty, greed, and more. We not all that different from the people of Jeremiah’s time. Heaney comments that the rotted, soiled underwear of this text doesn't look like such an inappropriate metaphor for our situation after all. The closeness God desires with His people is being shunned and some of our examples to other people are not of Beatitude people who Gandhi sought to see in Christians. The Gospel from Matthew Chapter 13 is in a section of that text where the teaching of Jesus in parables is concentrated. The USCCB commentary on this chapter states that parables are stories that are illustrative comparisons between Christian truths and events of everyday life. The growth of the Kingdom of God is described in these stories as starting from very simple and small actions. Friar Jude Winkler suggests that we act to forgive, be kind and treat others with special dignity as a seed which will grow to be a great statement of the reign of God. He and Robert P. Heaney today refer to the approach of the well educated and very intellectual Pope Francis who uses simple actions to emphasize how we can begin to return our soiled world to a deep closeness with the Divine.