by Fr. Ed Liptak, SDB
We call ourselves Christians, and the prayer of this Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time pleads for us “the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honor.” To do that we need help from God because our lives are filled with options. What will we do, or say? How will we live?
The longer form of the Gospel this week gives an option that is totally to be rejected. Jesus presents himself as a Sower of seed. That seed is his teaching, his word, distributed for all to hear. To totally ignore it, to see without seeing or hear without hearing, to make no effort or have no care to understand it, is to shut oneself out of the Kingdom of Heaven. We are meant by God to be harvested into eternal life. There is no chance for us if we choose to live recklessly without any regard for the teaching of Jesus.
Beyond not caring at all about Christ’s instructions for living a Christian way of life, the Gospel portrays several other options. But we must be careful. They are not just examples of where the seed may fall, but each example is the kind of person we might be. When Jesus explains the parable to his eager disciples, each explanation begins this way: “The seed sown [on the path, on the rocky ground, among thorns] is the one,” that, “is the person.” Each example is a kind of person confronted by the teaching of Christ!
So, one by one, the seed on the path is the kind of person who hears Christ’s teaching but makes no effort to understand and thus is overcome easily by evil. The seed on rocky ground is the kind of person who receives the word with feeling but is satisfied with passing joy. When trouble comes along, this person is rootless and quickly falls away. The seed sown among thorns is he or she that freely associates with evildoers and quickly falls away from virtue.
In one sweeping gesture Jesus has identified the weaklings of spiritual life. May it help us to grow instead, to be more like him. How? By being deep, rich soil attentive to the word of God, open to his gifts of grace, willing to accept the will of God. For then the Kingdom of Heaven is ours!