Fifteenth Sunday of the Year (Year A)

Fifteenth Sunday of the Year July 16, 2023

Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23

(Image courtesy: Google)

There once was a farmer who grew award-winning corn. Each year he entered his corn in the state fair where it won a blue ribbon. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbours.  How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbours when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?" the reporter asked.  "Why sir," said the farmer, "didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbours grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbours grow good corn."

In the first reading of today, Prophet Isaiah brings a message of consolation to the people of Israel in exile as he urges them to be hopeful of future glory. Rain comes down from above and makes the earth fruitful; the earth produces a good harvest and also prepares the seed for future use; just so God’s word rains down and enriches the world.  The world like parched earth is waiting for the rain of God’s word. The word of God has the same dramatic influence on the spiritual landscape.  Their lives in exile were deprived of life and hope.  All of that will change if they allow the word of God into their hearts.

The Parable of the Sower likens the teaching of God’s word to the sowing of seeds. The seeds fall on different types of soil, the pathway soil, the rocky soil, the thorny soil, and the good soil. Each of these types of soil is said to represent a certain type of heart with which hearers receive the word of God. The question each of us must ask ourselves today is, “What type of soil for the word of God do I represent? Am I like the pathway where the seed cannot even sprout, or like the rocky ground where the seed sprouts but has no roots, or like thorny ground where the word of God is choked to death by worldly cares, or like the good soil that bears much fruit? Comparing our different dispositions to different types of soil has one crucial limitation. Soil cannot help being what it is. We can. And so the question that follows is: “How can I improve the disposition of my heart so that the word of God can bear fruit in my life or bear fruit more abundantly?

In this parable Jesus Himself is the sower of the seed. He is the Eternal Word incarnate, provides the seed and sows it into the hearts of the hearers in order to provide a harvest of thirty, sixty, or a hundred fold. The harvest depends on the fertility of the soil/soul where it gets planted in. But the Word Himself will not make the soil fertile; it just depends on how much seed falls on the soil and how receptive the soil is to the Word. The Father provides Jesus with His Divine Word for the sowing, which in turn bears fruit unto eternal life for those who are willing to listen. 

Let us take home with us today the fact that the conditions of the soil encountered by the sower are not necessarily in four different fields.  Agricultural conditions in the Holy Land show that all four conditions may be found in one field. It is the same with each one of us. Sometimes we cannot take the word of God because our hearts are just too hard.  Sometimes we are enslaved by the attractiveness of the world. Sometimes when the word of God is given to us we crushed by the situations which take us away from God.  Sometimes when conditions are just right we permit the rain of God’s word to bring forth the blossoms of our love. If the results have been less than satisfactory, it is because we have not matured fully enough to produce the supernatural yield of which Jesus spoke.  There is clearly, of course, for us one place in particular where God's word is more clearly experienced and that is in Jesus Christ.

Happy Sunday