15th Sunday in OT 2020 - The soil of the heart

Matthew’s Gospel, through which we are reading extensively this year, is full of the Lord’s parables; of the four Gospels, Matthew has the most parables recorded. The Lord’s parables are simple enough for children to understand them, yet deep enough to continue to challenge the greatest of saints. In many of the parables, the Lord draws upon images, ideas, and customs from the everyday life of 1st century Israel, to illustrate some religious truth.  And though we now live 20 centuries and thousands of miles from ancient Israel, the Lord’s parables speak right to our hearts.

In fact, it is the human heart which is the focus of the parable of the sower we hear on this 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Is your heart receptive to the Gospel? is the question underlying this great parable. What is the state of our hearts? Are our hearts open, understanding, and responsive, to Jesus’ the Word of God and the grace of God.

The imagery of this parable was familiar territory for the Lord’s Jewish audience. In the Old Testament, the prophets often depict God as farmer, a sower of seed, who wishes to plant the seed of divine life in the hearts of his people in order to produce an abundant crop. As we hear in Isaiah, in the first reading, God’s word is a seed that is meant to bear fruit in us. Well, the Lord Jesus in today’s parable takes up that same theme. He is the sower and the seed is his Gospel, and the different soils represent the different hearts he encounters.

Let’s look at the four different types of responses to the Lord’s preaching. First there is the seed thrown on the path which is quickly eaten up by birds. Seed thrown on the sidewalk can’t take root, the sidewalk is too hard. So, too hearts can becomes so hardened to God by sin, that the preaching of the Gospel really has no effect on them. They might hear a nice sermon in Church or a fully accurate presentation of the Church’s moral theology, but they are unwilling to trade their sins for conversion and deep faith.

Lest we despair about just how many people seem to have hardened souls, these days, souls hardened toward God, we must not discount the power of grace to touch even the hardest of hearts. One of the promises the Lord made to St. Margaret Mary was that those who are devoted to the Sacred of Jesus, will have the gift to touch the most hardened of hearts. We believe that prayer and penance are powerful in obtaining the grace needed to touch and to reach those hard hearts. There are plenty of stories of atheists and people who even proclaimed to hate God, or who lived as if God didn’t exist, whose hearts melted when exposed to a beautiful liturgy, or a beautiful act of charity by a Catholic.
So just because a soul is hardened in sin now, doesn’t mean they are lost, or condemned to hell, just yet. God is at work to soften all hearts, and likely his instruments are people like you, people like me. But we must  remember such souls hardened souls, in our daily prayers, especially the rosary.

Secondly, we hear of the seed thrown on rocky ground. Our souls are rocky ground when we listen to the Gospel without the willingness keep the faith through rocky times. Here is the person who is initially enthused about the faith; maybe they have a powerful experience of the Lord at a retreat or in Catholic school, maybe they go through RCIA, but when they realize that Jesus makes demands of them, they give up the faith. They get a glimpse of the cross and instead of taking it up, the run away.
Again, we shouldn’t despair for these souls either. Plenty of lapsed Catholics come to recognize the importance of the faith for the good of their families and for their own eternal salvation. But again, these souls are brought back to God through our prayers and penances offered up for them.

Thirdly, we heard of the seed sown among thorns. What are these thorns but the attachments and distractions of the world. Our souls are thorny when we give too much energy to pursuing worldly things instead of seeking to grow in our faith and practice the works of charity: thorns like selfishness, lust, impatience, or resentment can cause the fire of faith to diminish, the seed of life to be choked out. Addictions especially can become so thorny they rip our souls to shreds. These spiritual thorns hinder the life God wants to grow in us. So, new Catholics and life-long Catholics must ensure that we stop the thorns from growing by making frequent examination of our conscience and frequent confession.

I saw a wonderful quote yesterday from the Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin about confession. He said, “If you don’t often go to confession, try going once a month for a year. Then, ask yourself, have I grown in virtue, overcome sins and bad habits? Am I more joyful, at peace, and more generous? Do I love God and neighbor more? The answer will be YES.”

Why does the bishop make that promise? Because confession helps us to rid our souls from thorns which keep us from the joy, peace, generosity, and love God wants for us.

Lastly, the Lord speaks of rich soil—the seed sown in rich soil. Our souls are rich soil when we hear God’s Word, when we accept its ramifications even with the willingness to suffer for it, when we clear out the thorns, the distractions the attachments, and we seek to understand all of the Gospel means for our ordinary lives. We must allow the Gospel to be planted deep in our their hearts, nurturing grace through prayer and acts of charity. And when we do, we bear tremendous fruit for the building up of the church.

We must make our hearts rich soil for the Word, but rich soil takes real effort to cultivate—our souls will never be fertile without prayer, serious examination of conscience, confession, meditation on Scripture, and getting serious about those works of mercy—clothing the naked, instructing the ignorant, feeding the hungry, bearing our crosses patiently.

But when we do get serious and make our hearts into that rich soil praised by the Lord, we become powerful instruments of the kingdom. May our hearts be like his, obedient to all the Father commands, filled with grace and courage for the glory of God and salvation of souls.