Many enjoy sprucing up the garden during the summer months. They equip themselves with every tool to build a nice garden. A pick to open up the ground, a shovel to turn over the soil, a rake to remove the weeds and clean up then a trowel and a tiller to keep the soil loose. But there is one thing that should not be missed, and that is the SEED. We can have the best kind of soil - but if we don’t have the seed or the bedding plants to plant - then we have nothing. So is it in our lives. The seed in the parable is the Word of God. We can do everything we can in our desire to come closer to God but unless we receive the Word of God deep into our lives we will have nothing of value.
Jesus is the Sower. He prepares our hearts to receive the seeds of the Holy Spirit and prays for the rain of grace from His Heavenly Father to bless us with a rich harvest. As Jesus tills our hearts, He discovers the hardness that has surrounded our hearts: bitterness and unforgiveness, addictions, selfishness and sins, petty annoyances, anxieties and attachment to worldly goods. Ever patiently, Jesus lovingly removes the thorns, thistles and weeds. Through the experiences of our life, the challenges, difficulties and trials we go through, Jesus softens our hearts and draws us back to Him. We groan in pain, sometimes we even resist this painful exercise and complain to our Lord. But St. Paul assures us in the 2nd Reading that “the sufferings of this present time are nothing compared to the glory to be revealed for us.” (Rom 8:18) As we yield more and more to the grace of God and willingly subject ourselves to this painful tilling and purification, He will bless us with a bountiful harvest.
Our Lord will never force Himself upon us because He has given us free will. As the Sower, He scatters the seeds of His grace everywhere indiscriminately. The soil of our hearts will yield a harvest according to how well we received and accepted the Word of God and how well we nourished the seed that was planted in our hearts. We must soften our hearts so that the Word of God will take root to hasten our spiritual growth. We must deepen our faith. We must not allow the thorns and weeds of anxiety, worries and other worldly concerns choke up the grace of our conversion, but instead, we must increase our trust in the Lord’s love for us. It is only then that we allow the seed God has planted in our hearts to settle deep in our being, to grow in understanding, and to yield a hundredfold as we become sowers ourselves. By His grace, we are able to join Jesus, the Sower and together scatter seeds far and wide. “But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Mt 13:23)
As Christ’s disciples, we have a shared responsibility to sow God’s Word and nourish His people. In receiving the Word He sows, God invites us to open our hearts, removing the stubborn obstacles within our control, so that we can be fruitful like the seed sown on good ground. If we accept God’s invitation seriously and share His Word with others, we not only receive His grace; we also become evangelizers of His word.
The same call to share the Good News is echoed by Pope Francis’ current thrust on the new evangelization. The ‘new evangelization’ is all about reminding ourselves that God has called all Catholics to reach out to others with the timeless gospel of Jesus Christ and to learn how to do that in a way the culture around us can understand and respond; to build bridges for the world that “God so loved” in order that all people may know the love of God in Jesus Christ.
Let us be true to our calling as disciples of Christ by using our gifts and talents, to reach others who have yet to hear or understand the good news of God’s plan of salvation in Jesus Christ.
They who have ears - let them hear - “Hear the word and understand it and bear fruit day by day, now and forever.
Our Lord will never force Himself upon us because He has given us free will. As the Sower, He scatters the seeds of His grace everywhere indiscriminately. The soil of our hearts will yield a harvest according to how well we received and accepted the Word of God and how well we nourished the seed that was planted in our hearts. We must soften our hearts so that the Word of God will take root to hasten our spiritual growth. We must deepen our faith. We must not allow the thorns and weeds of anxiety, worries and other worldly concerns choke up the grace of our conversion, but instead, we must increase our trust in the Lord’s love for us. It is only then that we allow the seed God has planted in our hearts to settle deep in our being, to grow in understanding, and to yield a hundredfold as we become sowers ourselves. By His grace, we are able to join Jesus, the Sower and together scatter seeds far and wide. “But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Mt 13:23)
As Christ’s disciples, we have a shared responsibility to sow God’s Word and nourish His people. In receiving the Word He sows, God invites us to open our hearts, removing the stubborn obstacles within our control, so that we can be fruitful like the seed sown on good ground. If we accept God’s invitation seriously and share His Word with others, we not only receive His grace; we also become evangelizers of His word.
The same call to share the Good News is echoed by Pope Francis’ current thrust on the new evangelization. The ‘new evangelization’ is all about reminding ourselves that God has called all Catholics to reach out to others with the timeless gospel of Jesus Christ and to learn how to do that in a way the culture around us can understand and respond; to build bridges for the world that “God so loved” in order that all people may know the love of God in Jesus Christ.
Let us be true to our calling as disciples of Christ by using our gifts and talents, to reach others who have yet to hear or understand the good news of God’s plan of salvation in Jesus Christ.
They who have ears - let them hear - “Hear the word and understand it and bear fruit day by day, now and forever.