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+ SEED SOWN ON RICH SOIL Our scripture
texts this Sunday are some of the more beautiful of the Church year. They speak
of the wonder of God’s creation, that deep interrelationship of humanity with
its environment, and even more profoundly the interrelationship of God’s word
with our lives. The parable we have just heard is often referred to as the
parable of the sower and not without reason, for it is about the divine
initiative, about God giving us his own divine Word, and most wonderful of all
giving us the Word now become flesh. But the parable is even more about our
human response to this initiative, the kind of soil we are in the presence of
the divine seed sown in our communities, in our society, in each of our hearts.
Our parable could well be called the parable of the soil as it calls us to
reflect on the quality of our openness to the gift of Divine life showered upon
us.
One is greatly assured by those words of the prophet Isaiah in
the first reading, how the rain and the snow watering the earth, makes it
fertile and fruitful. The fields around the abbey at the moment are a striking
example of just what some rain can do, all green and flush with new growth,
maturing corn fields. Isaiah uses this metaphor however, to assure us that the
gift of God’s own Word will be no less fertile and fruitful but will achieve the
end for which it has been sent.
St Paul in his letter to the Romans is equally comforting,
telling us that the effects of the fertile Word are awaited by all of creation,
a creation that groans in labor pains even until now that it may share in the
glorious freedom of the children of God. And not only that but we ourselves, who
have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly, as we await our being taken
up into God’s own life, await that moment when our very bodies will be
transformed into Christ’s own risen Body.
God’s word and work are present among us in ways that we can
hardly begin to think or imagine. Daily, we hear the scriptures read at Office
or from this lectern. Daily, Christ is at work among us in one another, our
relationships, in the ever evolving circumstances of our lives. Our parable
invites us to reflect on the depth and quality of our recognition and response.
As one author points out: "It is easy to receive what agrees with our own
thinking, with our own point of view, with our own theological stance. What is
difficult is to be open to statements or insights or practices that stretch or
challenge us that may force us to reevaluate what we hold dear. At issue is not
the character of the seed but the disposition of the soil.
It makes little difference who sows the seed. God works through
both the well recognized and the most unlikely of sowers. It might be a
legitimate leader of the community or one of its otherwise ordinary members; it
could be a child or an elder; it might even be someone from the outside, someone
with whom we are not familiar, someone we don’t particularly like." A simple
story may say it all. There was a little girl who lived in a rural area and was
receiving her first Bible instruction at the hands of her elderly grandmother,
and the old lady was reading the child the story of the creation. After the
story had been finished the little girl seemed lost in thought. Well, dear, said
the grandmother, ‘what do you think of it?’ ‘Oh, I love it. It’s so exciting,’
exclaimed the youngster. ‘You never know what God is going to do next!’ God is
constantly showering the soil of our hearts with blessings, of word and
circumstance. In the face of real life, the danger is that our hearts can become
hardened by trampling of human hurt, become rocky soil out of fear of challenge
and change, become soil filled with thorns due to worldly anxiety and the lure
of riches. On the other hand, they can become a fertile environment that allows
the seed sown in it to bear abundant fruit. This rich harvest takes place as
often as we welcome God’s gift, let it take root in ever more aspects of our
lives.
The Eucharist is a moment of not only for receiving God’s
revealing Word, lavishly sown in the midst of our assembly but also of receiving
this Word become flesh so as to become the very life from which we live. What
could be a more moving reminder of how deeply involved God wants to become with
us. Here at this alter, God nourishes the divine life is within us with nothing
less than the very Body and Blood of his Son, Jesus. The rich soil we bring to
this showering of God’s gift upon us is our faith, faith that looks into the
depth of God’s love for us, experiences its presence and lets it be nourished by
the response, the openness and receptivity of our lives.
Yesterday we heard the wonderful story of the person who went to a holy one in
order to have the eyes of his heart opened. He was finally told by the holy one
that in order to see God he needed only to truly be where he was and not
somewhere else in mind or heart. Let me suggest that in today’s gospel, Jesus
teaches us precisely how to be where we are when he asks the blind men if they
believe that he can heal them.
It is faith that allows us to fully accept ourselves for who we
are in all our weakness, in our own blindness. It is faith that allows us to see
that we are loved for who we truly are so that there is no need to be somewhere
else, no need to be someone else, no need to meet someone else’s expectations.
And is it not faith that opens our eyes to Him who is even now standing before
each one of us and to recognize His presence not only here in the Eucharist but
in every moment of our lives. Is He not even now saying to us as he said to the
blind men who were following him: “Let it be done for you according to your
faith.”
Michael Casagram, OCSO
Abbey of Gethsemani
13 July 2008
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