There is no shortage of angst and hand-wringing about the problems in the Church these days. One of them that gets particular attention is the declining numbers of people in the pews. In the US and western Europe, at least, the decline is striking, as fewer and fewer people seem to care about religion or worshipping the Divine. Our response to this trend can be to blame ourselves-- we're not doing enough, we don't know how to appeal to the youth, if only we were better homilists, or had better programs, or prayed more, things would change, we tell ourselves. Somehow the decline in numbers becomes our fault. Don't get me wrong-- there are plently of things people in the Church have done which have driven folks out the doors, and we need to do what we can to stop those kinds of behaviors. But, as today's Gospel (Mk 4: 26-34) reminds us, our role, and thus our responsibility, is limited. We are called to sow the seed-- to spread the Good News of the Kingdom of God wherever and whenever we can-- like the man scattering seed in the first parable Jesus tells today. Note what Jesus says next, though. After the seed is sown, the seed sprouts and grows and the one who scattered it "knows not how." There is a dynamic, a mechanism that causes the seed to do what it is programmed to do that is not the responsibility of the sower. It is something the sower does not even understand. It just happens. So it is with us and the Church as well. We sow the seeds, and we have no understanding of, or control over, when and how (and even whether) the seeds sprout and grow. That is out of our hands. I am told that eveny night before he goes to bed, Pope Francis prays something like this: Lord, I have done the best I could today, but it is your Church, and the rest is up to you. Having left things in God's hands, the Pope sleeps peacefully. So let's not beat ourselves up so much about what has gone wrong with the Church. After all, who wants to be part of a group that is always down, that is complaining about how bad things are and how things used to be better? Would you join such an organization? No, we do the best we can, and after that, it is up to God. We scatter the seeds, and they will sprout and grow in their own time. We "know not how."