Today's Gospel about the Parable of the Sower is
a very well known passage to most Christians. It is so well known
that I think it is very easy for us to get a bit complacent with what
it is really trying to tell us to do. We understand what the parable
means and what Jesus is telling us in it, that we must listen to the
Word of God being spoken to us and understand it, but we become
complacent as to what we must do in order to accomplish this. Jesus
mentions four different locations where the seeds fall, but it is
very easy for us to automatically identify with the seeds that fall
on rich soil. In other words, we assume that we are the good little
Christians who listen and obey God and all those other examples are
there as warnings to all the other people out there who don't listen.
The problem is, as we all know, we are not perfect; we do not always
listen as carefully as we should. How, then, do we reach that
perfection so that we may produce fruit a hundred fold?
It's tempting to think that if we just listen to
God's words the best that we can then that same Word will
automatically make everything alright; almost as if His words have
some sort of magical powers. Many of us grew up hearing fairytales
that often include fairy godmothers and wizards and good witches and
bad witches and the like. In those stories the trick is to say the
magical words just right or complete a simple task and everything
will be as it should be. We would all love to have a solution where
we could just say the magic words, “bibitty, bobitty, boo” and
all our problems are solved or to receive true love's first kiss or
click our heels together and everything becomes perfect. It doesn't
work that way in real life and neither does it work in the spiritual
life. Wouldn't it be wonderful if when we were ready to give our all
to Christ we just called out, “Okay God, I'm ready! Do your
stuff!” and we just had to stand there with our arms out and waited
for God's Word and His graces to wash over us and automatically make
us into His perfect follower? However, it requires a much more
active participation on our part. Now don't get me wrong; there is
still such a thing as God grace. This grace is often called
“unmerited grace”, meaning God gives us that grace no matter what
we do, or don't do for that matter. I'm not saying that God's help
for us is determined by our actions, I am saying that when He does
help us, we need to actually respond and use those gifts and graces.
We aren't just some passenger along for the ride.
God tells us through the Prophet Isaiah today
that His word doesn't go out and return to Him void. Rather it goes
out and actually has a great and very powerful effect on others. The
image is used of how rain comes and waters the earth and causes
things to grow and bear fruit. So what that tells us is that God has
spoken and sent His word and His graces upon us. Now, how are we
going to respond?
As I mentioned before, Jesus gives us four
scenarios of what happens to the seeds of the sower. If we look back
over our lives and examine our consciences, I hope we will see that
we have at one time or another fallen into more of theses categories
than we may realize.
Let us first consider the seed that falls on the
path. Jesus tells us this is the one “who hears the word of the
kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals
away what was sown in his heart.” There are times when it is hard
to understand what is being talked about. Maybe we don't understand
something we read or hear read from Scripture. Maybe we hear
something of Church teaching that makes little or no sense to us. In
a perfect world we would all seek to understand this better and
explain it to each other. But perhaps out of laziness and not
wanting to go through all the work, or perhaps out of not wanting to
know what it means because we are afraid that we will have to change
how we think of other things, we end up not understanding it better.
Then what could have been a wonderful lesson of God's unending love
for us is taken away forever.
The seed that falls on rocky ground is a person
described as “one who hears the word and receives it at once with
joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some
tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately
falls away.” Whenever I reflect on this one, I picture several
times as a teenager when I would go to a youth retreat or to a youth
event either at my home parish or something going in Duluth. Many
times when I would go on these things something awesome would happen:
I would experience God's presence or His grace or His forgiveness or
His love in some very intense way. I came away thinking I could do
whatever God asked of me. I wanted to hold on to this feeling
forever. But then some sort of hardship would take that away. No
one would listen to what I wanted to say about Jesus. I wasn't
exactly the most popular kid so I didn't have many friends and didn't
find the support that I was looking for from my peers. These weren't
persecutions per se as Jesus mentions, but they are still
hardships that take away what we started out with. Maybe it wasn't
at a youth event, but you may have had one of those uplifting
spiritual moments in your life that was taken away by hardships
caused by others who just didn't get what you experienced.
Similarly we hear about the seed sown among
thorns. Jesus tells us that this one “hears the word, but then
worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no
fruit.” This is much like the last example except that it is about
the fears and anxieties that we may have about our lives. It is also
about the temptations of worldly goods, fears that are easy for us to
have.
The key with the last two is to not let those
distractions of hardships or stress and temptations towards worldly
things to get in our way. This is often easier said than done, but
if those are the things that are drawing us away from God, don't you
think it is worth finding away around it? Most importantly, let us
not forget that God wants us with Him. That means He will be with us
to help us past these stumbling blocks. Then we will bear great
fruit; then we will experience the never ending joy of Heaven.
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