The Right Path

This parable of the Sower contrasts our many human limits with God’s love-driven boundlessness and infinitude. Due to our physical, emotional, intellectual, psychological limits and to the restricted resources available, we can insist on placing our self-interest ahead of solidarity and cooperation, or we can share with others while preferring to share with those whom we consider more deserving because of like-mindedness or commonalities. In any case, we fall victim to dissatisfaction of many kinds. 

The good news we tend to forget is that, having no limits to his love and power, God sent his Sower, Jesus, to sow the seed of his Word in a way that is quite unusual, wasteful, if not altogether … irrational. (Mt 13:1-23)

On the path where birds are quick to eat most of it. On rocky ground where, once grown, it would not last to maturity. Among thorns where it is choked off. And finally, on good soil as well.

Three years ago, on the same Sunday, the Lord offered the same long parable for our consideration. Has there been any noticeable improvement in our living out God’s Word in these three years? Are we fully engaged with God’s Word, or do we suffer from lukewarmness, or complacency or aloofness?

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear.” (Matthew 13:16)

Since we claim that we love Jesus and appreciate the tremendous gift of faith, these words of blessing might sound like a combination of rebuke and as a call to stoke our dormant love for the Lord.

A wonderful, very comforting yet challenging thought just crossed my mind: since God is in no way constrained by time, we can believe that from before time began, our Heavenly Father thought of each one of us, and decided to send his Son, the Divine Sower, to sow the seed of his life-giving Word on any terrain in which our heart might find itself in the troubled course of our life. Hence, his Son sowed his seed most generously, I dare say, recklessly, wastefully, in our heart when it was like a hardened beaten path, on the rocky ground of our stubbornness, amid the thorns of our unruly passions, and on the promising soil of our good intentions and resolve.

A first sensible reaction on our part, then, should be to approach Jesus with a humble heart and ask for clarifications lest, like disinterested crowds, ‘they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.’ (Mt 13:13)

In his detailed explanation given in personalized fashion to us as his disciples, the Lord rebukes us gently so that we treasure his Word with passion and alertness. Why? As things are now, around the clock, Satan attempts to steal the words of life sown in our hearts because he knows about their infinite power. After urging us to protect the Word with intense desire and watchfulness, Jesus stresses the crucial importance of avoiding short-lived enthusiasm and profit from the Word with willpower, eagerness, and perseverance, past the usual, initial joy. 

Even as Jesus talks to us so gently, we notice that the level of anxiety in our heart is still way too high for someone who claims to be one of his disciples. Hence, we hurry to ask him to pour in it a very generous portion of his Holy Spirit, the Divine Comforter, so that it may become free of anxiety and agitation until it rests in him as the only genuine source of serenity and childlike trust.

For good measure, to make sure that we protect the Word sown so generously into our heart, we pause to wonder how many times we have allowed Satan to steal it! May that embarrassment fuel our resolve to bear a great yield with the help of the Holy Spirit!