This Sunday, ‘This time, It’s Personal’: Christ’s Sequel to the Parable of the Sower

Jesus provides us with an action plan for a fruitful and full life, offering a number of analogies for the kingdom of God — and its enemy — in the readings for Mass on the Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A.

Here are six takeaways drawn from Sunday Readings columns at this site and the Extraordinary Story podcast.

First: Last week, we heard the Parable of the Sower. This week, we hear its sequel.

“The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field,” Jesus begins in the Gospel for this Sunday.

Last Sunday he told us about a sower who threw seeds everywhere, such that the evil one came and stole them away, or crowded them out. Now, the sower is putting his seeds where they will do the most good, in his field. So the enemy’s plan of attack changes: “While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off,” Jesus says.

When the wheat and weeds both sprout, the servants want to pull up the weeds, but the householder says “No.” Jesus explains later that the weeds will be taken care of when two plants are fully grown. Or, applying the story to human beings, “The Son of Man will send his angels,” who will gather “who cause others to sin and all evildoers” and “throw them into the fiery furnace.”

Jesus Christ himself is telling us the world is like a garden. Our job isn’t to tend the garden; it’s to bear fruit for the gardener. We may end up doing it side by side with those who do evil, but that is not our concern.

Second: Since this is God’s garden, it is not our job to root evil out on our own.

We are to wait for Jesus Christ to do that. Here we have a direct application of Christ’s assurance that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

We need to treat the world the way Christ did, says St. Jerome:

“The Lord warns us not to pass a hasty judgment on an ambiguous word,” he said. “We should not hastily cut off a brother, since one who is to-day corrupted with an erroneous dogma, may grow wiser tomorrow, and begin to defend the truth.”

St. Augustine is quick to point out, however, that this does not excuse us from the spiritual work of mercy of admonishing the sinner. We do that on a small scale, but the Church has to do it on a large scale, including penalties and even excommunication, which should be administered to sinners “with tenderness, not for his rooting out, but for his correction.” Think of it as the Church refusing to sleep as the sower makes a mess of his field.

Augustine sums it up:

“Therefore let a man gently reprove whatever is in his power; what is not so let him bear with patience, and mourn over his affliction, until he from above shall correct and heal, and let him defer till harvest time to root out the weeds and winnow the chaff.”

In the meanwhile, our job is to encourage the positive miracle of growth God is constantly performing.

Third: God is the Lord of the slow-motion miracle.

After Jesus compares the kingdom of God to wheat and weeds, he tells two more parables.

One is another seed “sowed in a field”: a mustard seed that becomes “the largest of plants” and attracts nesting birds who “dwell in its branches.” The second is yeast: Like a seed, yeast in dough works its magic slowly and quietly, such that you hardly notice what is going on.

In each case, the kingdom grows in ways we don’t control and barely notice — but in ways we can interact with and prepare for.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that God’s subtle and overwhelming power is constant and unstoppable. In his book Miracles, he used wine as an example:

“God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus, every year, from Noah’s time to ours, God turns water into wine …  But when Christ at Cana makes water into wine, the mask is off.”

The kingdom of God is in constant slow growth mode. He can speed up the process if he wants to, but he rarely does.

Look at the First Reading from Wisdom. It praises God for “mastery over all,” saying, “you show your might when the perfection of your power is disbelieved … power, whenever you will, attends you.”

Look at the Second Reading from Romans, where St. Paul speaks about how the Spirit teaches us to pray. He does it by coming “to the aid of our weakness.” He does it by working through our “searching hearts” and “interceding through inexpressible groanings” as we “wait for adoption.”

There is no such thing as instant gratification in the spiritual life. but there is the unstoppable slow-motion miracle of grace.

Fourth: That means both that’s it’s never too late to become who we want to be, but we have to start right away.

If you want bread now, you needed to have started the process of making it long before now. Bread now needed baking minutes ago; it needed yeast hours ago; it needed milling days ago; it needed harvesting weeks ago; and the seeds needed to be planted months ago.

In the same way, you can’t realize your full potential in Christ today, however much you want to, if you never began the process — but you can become who you were made to be if you start watching, praying, and serving now.

Don’t worry about who will be “thrown into the fiery furnace;” do what you need to do in order to “shine like the sun.” Plant tiny seeds.

Do what one obscure Polish family, the Wojtylas (woe-TEE-yahs), did. They lived their Chrisitan lives simply but thoroughly, embracing their Christian duty despite the suffering they faced — and their small seeds of witness gave us John Paul the Great, who changed our map, our calendar, our prayer, our liturgy, and colleges that embrace their Catholic identity.

Or do what Nikollë Bojaxhiu (boy-AH-jee-o) did. He died when his daughter was young, but she never forgot what he told her, “My little daughter, always share even the least bit of food you have with others, especially the poor. Selfishness is a disease of the spirit.” His daughter grew up to be Mother Teresa, and his mustard seed became a worldwide apostolate in service of the poor.

Our faith may not have the excitement and novelty of the latest intellectual fad, but we can each plant a grove of mustard plants in the world with our daily rosaries, daily works of mercy for the poor in body and spirit, our weekly Friday sacrifices, and our alsmgiving.

Sixth: The Church’s future belongs to “little ones;” not to the wise and learned dissenters.

In the fifth century, St. Jerome prophesied the 21st-century Church’s future when he said:

“put [the doctrine of the cross] side by side with the teachings of the philosophers, their books, their splendid eloquence and fine discourses, and you will see just how small it ist.”

But when those other ideas grow,

“they have nothing to show that is trenchant or vigorous or vital. Everything turns out weak and withering [and they] quickly dry up and fall to the ground. But when this tiny gospel teaching that seemed insignificant at the beginning has been planted either in the soul of the believer or throughout the world, it does not turn out to be just a plant. It grows into a tree, so that the birds of the air, which we interpret as the souls of believers or deeds dedicated to the service of God, come and dwell on its branches.”

It takes faith to trust that God will root out the weeds, so pray for faith. It takes hope to plant a tiny seed and expect it to be more powerful than the terrible weeds, so pray for hope. It takes love to care patiently for growing things, so practice love.

You will find that faith, hope and love are the mysterious ingredients that make everything in your life grow and swell and, eventually, feed the world.

Image: wiki

By Tom Hoopes