Mt. 13:1-23
“Although the life of a person is full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow, you have to trust God.” (Pope Francis)
Jesus always used concrete symbols of day-to-day life to converse and communicate his message of the kingdom to his followers. In today’s gospel, we see Jesus sharing with them the parable of the sower. This parable presents to us four different types of land. The path, the rocky ground, the thorns, and the good land. Jesus used these images to speak about varied responses to his ministry and also shed light on different forms of interior life.
The first one is the path. The birds ate the sown seeds here. We could easily relate the Pharisees of Jesus’ time to this category. They were totally unreceptive to the teachings of Jesus. They failed to understand Jesus. Though they had heard the teachings and witnessed the miracles performed by Jesus, they could not accept and believe in him. They kept their hearts hard and blind to the teachings of Jesus.
The second category is grain falling on the rock. Since it fell on the rock, it could not take root in the depths. When it rose, it withered away. This denotes the followers of Christ who readily accepted the teachings of Jesus. Anyhow, they could not sustain their initial enthusiasm. When the temptations of the world come, they abandon their relationship with Jesus and give priority to the pleasures of the world.
The seed that fell among the thorny bushes comes next. This bush never allows the seed to come up and produce fruit, and it chokes it. There were Israelites who listened to the words of Jesus. Yet they were choked by the anxieties and deceitfulness of the world. The seeds that fell from the good ground were those who listened and accepted the word wholeheartedly. They allowed the word of God to take flesh in them and produce thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold.
In the first reading taken from the prophet Isaiah, we see Isaiah speak of the efficacy of the Word of God. The Word of God will not return to the Lord until it accomplishes the purpose for which it was sent by the Lord. Therefore, what matters is the nature of the land. It should be sufficiently prepared for the Word of God to exercise its potential and lead to its fruition. It is not the responsibility of the sower to prepare the land; instead, it is the responsibility of the owner to get the land ready. There is always rocky ground and thorns to transform into good land.
The famous philosopher Martin Heidegger used to opine that we are thrown into the world. We need to bloom where we are thrown. However, we have our freedoms and choices. It is our will and choice that result in the formation of the good land and a well-balanced and receptive interior spiritual life. The materialist culture of our time, new-age lifestyles, the influence of social media, etc. are challenges that could prevent our growth in the spiritual life. The grace of God is always available to develop our interior lives by transforming our inner selves into good, fertile land that has the capacity to produce fruits. As we continue our faith journey, let us examine and see the nature of the interior life that we have. If it is like the path, the rocky ground, or the thorns, let us allow the grace of God to work in us and transform itself into the good land, which radiates a balanced spiritual life and thus produces abundant fruits.