DAILY HOMILIES #labour pains

As long as we let our light shine as God’s children, we cannot escape moments of persecution. In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus likens these persecutions to the pains a woman feels when she is about to give birth. When a woman is in travail, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world.

One does not become a saint or a sinner overnight. The journey of a thousand miles begins with just one tiny and often unnoticed step. It is not the size of the first step that matters but the direction in which it points. Jesus tells us today that the Kingdom of God begins like a grain of mustard seed that is planted.