July 2, 2020

At Mercy Home for Boys & Girls, we like to say that we give our young people both roots and wings. An image of a tree symbolizes this idea. It is important to us that our young people have solid roots, deep in the ground, that create a firm foundation for the rest of their lives. Of course, these roots don’t form overnight. It takes time and care. They are built because we provide our children with an excellent education, a safe, loving environment, therapeutic services, and, most importantly, compassion and love. These things help our children to develop a strong sense of self and to envision a brighter future. In order for our boys and girls to truly succeed in life, their roots must go deep so that one day they will have wings to fly. Or, in other words, succeed.

In one of the Gospel passages this month, Jesus speaks of a sower sowing seed in the fields. This image was one that people who lived during Jesus’s time would understand. The seed, as we are told, falls on all types of ground—rock ground, scorched earth, and rich, fertile soil. The seed that is successful is the seed that lands on fertile soil and establishes deep roots in order to grow and produce wheat in abundance.

This Gospel passages gives all of us an invitation to do all we can to establish deep roots into fertile soil, the loving heart of God. When we are in communion with the Lord—and nourished by our lives of prayer, doing good for others, the sacramental life of the Church, and being a grateful people—we allow the roots of our faith to go deep and to be nourished. This allows us to produce fruit. The Gospel tells us that when our roots go deep, we will produce a hundred or sixty or thirty-fold. It is only with a firm foundation in God’s love that we are able to continue the work of God with our own gifts and talents in the world in which we live.

Giving kids roots and wings is a defining value behind the work we do at Mercy Home. But it can also easily be a motto for all of us who live our Christian faith. It can encourage us to develop deep roots so that we are able to fly and to bring the good news of the Gospel to others through what we say and what we do.

As we celebrate the Eucharist together this month, we come before the Lord with grateful hearts and a deep desire to be nourished by His word. It is through the Eucharist so that we are able to do His work by being faithful to His will, which is to love.