Reflection
Today’s readings bring back wonderful memories of my childhood, growing up on a small farm northeast of Detroit. From an early age, I remember helping with farm chores: milking cows, gathering eggs, feeding pigs, watering livestock, planting and weeding gardens, repairing fences, digging drainage ditches, canning fruits and vegetables and many other typical tasks required to keep a family of nine nourished and comfortable on the 40-acre tract that we called home. By the age of nine, I was privileged to have been able to till and cultivate the farm fields with the new Farmall 100 tractor that my father had purchased. I remember spending many joyful hours pulling the disc around the fields while the blackbirds filled the skies overhead with their aerial acrobatics. I learned to appreciate the effort and care required to produce good harvests from the fields and the livestock.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus relates to the large crowd gathered around him the challenges of producing good harvests. Even on our carefully maintained farm, not all harvests were as abundant as others. If seeds were not properly planted, the birds came and ate them up. If seeds fell on stiff untilled soil, the sun rose and those seeds were scorched and withered for lack of roots. If certain crops were not properly cultivated, weeds would grow to swiftly overtake the crops and diminish the harvest. When insects and crop diseases were not adequately controlled, an entire field of produce could be wiped out.
The disciples are once again confused by one of Jesus’ parables. They challenge him to clarify the meaning of his message. He explains that the seeds in his parable are the “words of the kingdom”. The seeds sown on the path are given to those who hear the word without understanding and the evil one comes and steals them away. The seeds sown on rocky ground are given to those who hear and receive the word with great joy, but the seeds do not take root and they die.
The seeds sown among thorns are those that are initially received and understood but later overpowered by the lure of riches of the world But the seed that is planted carefully in well-tilled, carefully maintained soil, will produce abundant harvest.
Throughout our lives, we are simultaneously the seed that has been planted from the time of our baptism, hopefully in fertile soil, as well as the sower who in turn is able to replant the seed in the hopes of producing further abundant harvests.
- Each of us individually is able to hear the word of God, nurture it in our daily lives and produce an abundant harvest of teaching and lessons to share with others. However, we must be spiritually prepared and open to seeing and hearing the word of God. Like the farmer, we must cultivate and nourish God’s word within our own fields, so that it may produce an abundant harvest in our own spiritual lives. We are the farmers of our own crops in our own souls.
- As our crop of spirituality becomes sufficiently abundant to share with others, we must plant other seeds as widely as possible with those around us recognizing that some of our words will fall on the path that we walk, some will fall onto rocky ground, and yet others will fall among the weeds and thorns. However, if we live prayerful and spiritual lives of good example many of the seeds that we plant will in turn produce abundant future harvests of their own.
May the Passion of Jesus Christ be always in our hearts!
