~ Today I stand to sing the praises of the honeybee! 

1/3 of the food you enjoy is because of the hard work of the honeybee. From the blueberry bogs of Maine to the almond orchards of California, bees are the unsung, unpaid, laborers of American agriculture. Honeybees are the glue that hold our agricultural system together, as they pollinate the seeds that ripen into our apples, cucumbers, cranberries and most of the other fruits and vegetables we eat.

A single hardworking bee can visit up to 100 flowers in a single trip and carry more than half its weight in pollen, yet a single honeybee will produce only a twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its short lifetime. To produce one pound of honey, a colony of bees will fly more than 55,000 miles and tap more than two million flowers.  

But the honeybees, and all of us, are in trouble. Over the past decades, 40-60% of bee colonies have collapsed. Scientists fear that the use of more virulent pesticides, as well as new viruses and diseases are killing billions of bees.  

The loss of the honeybee would leave the planet poorer and hungrier, but what most concerns scientists and farmers is that what’s happening to the bees may be a sign of what’s to come for the world. The bee is, in a sense, a symbol that there is something deeply wrong with the world around us.  

A new appreciation for the little honeybee mirrors Jesus’ gospel of the mustard seed: that what is small, seemingly insignificant, and all but invisible can produce great things in the scheme of God. And the mustard seed really is a metaphor for faith. Even small, seemingly insignificant faith can do great things.  

Friends, God treasures what is small, insignificant often overlooked. 
After all, God came to us as one who was small: a helpless baby, without a home, in a forgotten corner of the world. 
So, our God feels a special affinity for those in this world that are weak. Overlooked. Neglected. Dismissed. 

I think of St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, whose feast day we just celebrated this week, a young woman, barely more than a girl, who hid herself in a Carmelite convent and vowed to find her path to God through what she called her “Little Way,” finding God in simple things like washing a dish or smiling at someone who bothered her. She died at just 24 – and is hailed as one of the Church’s most beloved saints, and as one of the great doctors of the Church. Mother Teresa, St. Teresa of Calcutta, built on that and reminded us that we are not all called to do great things, but we are all called to do small things with great love.

Great things often begin with something small. And, on this Respect Life Sunday, when we are called to honor life, our hearts and minds are drawn to those who are the smallest of all. Those who are often dishonored and even discarded. Those who are literally the size of a mustard seed. 

Science tells us that at five weeks, an embryo is roughly the size of the tip of a pen – only a little bit smaller than a mustard seed. 

And that small life, imperceptible and maybe even unknown, is loved by God. It has a spark of the divine. It carries with it the potential to one day build towers, compose symphonies, cure diseases, love and be loved. There is a purpose to its being, even in being so small. 
Over the last five decades, politics and acrimony about abortion has often overshadowed an important truth: the child in the womb is loved by God, created in God’s image and likeness, and that gives it inestimable worth. Indeed, God feels a special closeness with the weak, the struggling, the defenseless, the small. Every life carries possibility, and hope. 

As Catholic Christians, it is our responsibility to proclaim that hope to the world, to respect life as the sacred gift that it is, in all its forms, in all its stages. To pray for life. To nurture it. To act as collaborators with God, to help His work come into the world, and continue. 

And to do that with even the tiniest mustard seed of faith, trusting, somehow, in God’s will.      

If we do that, who knows what miracles might happen? 

Who knows what mulberry trees we might be able to move?