SEPTEMBER 19, 2026 FATHER HENK VAN MEIJEL
Today’s readings are kind of going from what we know and right into the mystical.
The Gospel reading, the parable of the sower, which we hear so many times during the year and over the years because it’s found in all three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and also in the Gospel of Thomas, the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas, which we, of course, never hear during mass.
And this path and this parable of the seed and the sower, it makes sense that we have to hopefully end up on the good soil, that we produce a hundredfold, but that’s not so easy. And to say, “I am perfect; look at what I have done, and I produce a hundredfold,” that would be sheer pride. Someone else would have to say this about us. I never heard of any of the saints going around and saying, “Look how fruitful I am. Look at all these things what happen around me.”
So we have to be very careful, and it has to be left to God, God who is the sower. And we have to answer God’s calling wherever we are, and it does not matter if we are a janitor and we clean toilets or we are a cardinal or a bishop or whatever. We are called each to do our part and to be open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Actually, a private prayer I’ve had for many years is, “God, use me according to your desire.” And it’s about giving up control about our lives, giving our lives to God to be used for others, and this is so key in our lives and coming to God. And hopefully, one day, by God’s grace, I will be called home, but in the end, it’s still up to God.
In the first reading of Corinthians, St. Paul uses again the analogy of the wheat, of seeds, and he deals with a question within the Corinthian community about dying. What happens when we die? How can I know that I will live after I die a earthly death? And there’s no answers. It’s mystery.
And so, he uses these sayings. It is sown corruptible. So, bodily we are corruptible, and we’re raised incorruptible. And at the same time, he says it is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. And that’s all he can say. There’s no hard evidence, no “This is what’s going to happen after you die.”
It is about personal experience, and really, in our lives, we think we know a lot. In our modern culture, we think we know a lot, but on the other hand, we know just very little. I really like science, and I listen to a lot of podcasts and so on about science. And it does not mean that I know anything about science.
But in science, the further we go, the more mystical it becomes, the less answers we will have, and especially in quantum mechanics, where we go way beyond to things which we only can imagine, we cannot see. And the hadron collider in Switzerland and partly on France, they can smash all kinds of atoms and whatever, and they come up with things.
But it becomes more mystical the more we go along, and as people, we like simple answers, simple answers to very complex issues. But like I said, it always becomes more mystical, no matter where we look in life and even in science. And so it’s being comfortable with not having answers, being comfortable, and in the end, it has to be a personal experience of God to really believe.
And God is the first mover, and we have to be open to the word of God. Of course, it starts with me that I say, “Yes, Lord. Use me according to your desire” so that I’m hopefully as open as I can be.
But as I was praying with this, I had to think of some of the scientists who are also religious, who bring science and religion together. Science and religion are not two different things. They mesh nicely together.
For instance, in Canada, we are blessed with one of my Jesuit brothers, Fr. Adam Hincks, who, at age 25, had already a PhD in astrophysics at Princeton University. He teaches at the University of Toronto, and he can bring complicated things together, science and religion, to kind of understand it. And a person like that who’s so intelligent, he also had obviously a personal experience of God, and he’s being used by God in science.
Another person which is more known is Brother Guy, who for many years was the director of the Vatican Observatory, who’s a planetary scientist, and who also knows that faith and religion go together and that it’s mystical.
What happens after we die we will find out. It’s spiritual, but we know there’s life after death, and I’m assured of that as through my own experiences, but can I really explain it in a scientific manner? I cannot, but I know it is there. Amen.
