Lectio Divina for Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Theme: “proclamation”
1. Lectio
> “As you go, make this proclamation: ‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”
— Matthew 10:7
Jesus does not first command the Twelve to build institutions, solve every problem, or guarantee success. He simply commands them to make a proclamation. A proclamation is not a private opinion whispered in safety. It is a public declaration that demands trust in the One who sent the messenger.
The Kingdom is not something I manufacture. It is something I announce because it has already drawn near in Christ.
The question for me is not whether my proclamation will succeed. The question is whether I have enough faith to proclaim it at all.
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2. Meditatio
Today is my birthday. My grandkids now think I’m a bit less cool because instead of saying I’m “6-7,” I simply have to admit that I’m sixty-eight.
Today is also the day I officially make a proclamation.
I begin my seven-year retirement—or rather, my Laudato Si’ Action Plan—which, God willing, will culminate on my seventy-fifth birthday.
The Laudato Si’ Action Platform invites individuals and communities into a seven-year journey toward integral ecology, where care for creation, care for the poor, and love of Christ become one mission rather than separate interests.
My own proclamation is both simple and audacious.
I hope to develop a parish-based model of urban regenerative agriculture that restores the land while feeding people. By carefully managing grazing animals, I hope to imitate the natural movements of wild herds that stimulate plant growth, return fertility to the soil, and rebuild biodiversity. By converting lawn clippings into silage, I hope to transform what most neighborhoods consider waste into nutritious livestock feed, allowing ordinary lawn care to become regenerative instead of extractive.
It sounds almost absurd.
Perhaps that is because the Gospel always sounds absurd before it becomes history.
At sixty-eight, many people proclaim what they have accomplished. I find myself proclaiming what has not yet been done.
That frightens me.
There is something deeply humiliating about announcing a mission before there is any evidence that it will succeed. If I quietly tinker with these ideas at The Glenn, no one can laugh if they fail. But once I proclaim them publicly, I become accountable—not only to others, but to myself.
Yet Jesus never told the apostles to wait until they had visible results before making their proclamation.
The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio proclaimed that “human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development.” It was a worthy proclamation, yet many of its principles still await practical realization. Pope Francis, recognizing how fragmented our world has become, calls us in Fratelli Tutti toward social friendship, universal fraternity, and “a better politics” ordered to the common good. He dreams of a world where every person has land, housing, and work, and where communities choose encounter over isolation.
Finally, in Dilexit Nos, Francis reminds me that even the noblest ecological or social project is hollow unless it springs from friendship with Christ. There is no greater response to the Sacred Heart than to love my brothers and sisters concretely.
That is precisely what keeps my proclamation from becoming merely another environmental program.
I am not proclaiming regenerative agriculture.
I am proclaiming the Kingdom of Heaven through regenerative agriculture.
The soil is not my destination. Christ is.
The grass, the sheep, the livestock guardian dogs, the silage, the lawns, and The Glenn are simply the language through which I hope to announce that God’s Kingdom has come near.
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3. Oratio
Lord Jesus,
Today You ask me to make a proclamation.
I confess that I would rather make plans than proclamations.
Plans can remain hidden.
Proclamations expose my hopes, my weaknesses, and even my foolishness.
As I begin this new year of life, give me the courage to speak aloud the mission You have placed within my heart.
If my plans are merely my own ambitions, allow them to fade.
But if this seven-year journey belongs to You, strengthen my resolve whenever fear whispers that I am too old, too small, or too late.
May every pasture become a classroom.
May every blade of harvested grass become a lesson in Your providence.
May every act of caring for creation become an act of loving You.
Let my proclamation never be about me, but always about the nearness of Your Kingdom.
Amen.
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4. Contemplatio (A Chestertonian Synthesis)
There is something wonderfully comic about birthdays. Children count them because they believe they are becoming something. Older people stop counting them because they fear they are becoming nothing. Christianity laughs at both calculations. Every birthday is merely another sunrise in the adventure of becoming a saint.
The world imagines retirement as the gradual disappearance of purpose. Heaven seems to prefer the opposite arrangement. Abraham began wandering when common sense suggested he should have settled down. Moses was eighty before he began leading Israel. Saint John wrote Revelation as an old exile. Apparently God has never been especially impressed by calendars.
The greatest proclamation is never, “Look what I have accomplished.”
It is always, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
The Kingdom arrives not because my plans are perfect, but because Christ has already gone ahead of me.
Perhaps my seven-year plan will flourish.
Perhaps parts of it will fail spectacularly.
Either outcome is secondary.
For the true proclamation is not that regenerative agriculture will save the world.
The true proclamation is that Christ is already saving it, and He has graciously invited an aging shepherd from The Glenn to help scatter a few seeds along the way.
Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
