Reflections on the Sunday Scriptures
In the Gospel this past Sunday, Jesus tells us the familiar Parable of the Sower, who sows the seed profligately on a variety of soil: dry, hardened soil; rocky soil; thorny soil; and good soil. The seed, He tells us, represents the Word; the soil represents our hearts. The question the parable seems to propose for us, then, is how we prepare the "soil" of our hearts to receive the Word. How do we get rid of the rocks and thorns and break up the packed-down hardness of our hearts?
Yet herein lies a puzzle, because the Psalm tells us that we are not the ones who prepare the soil at all. God is. God is the one, the Psalmist proclaims, who "prepares the land" and "breaks up its clods." And the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah reminds us that God is also the "rain and snow" that "water the earth" and make it "fertile and fruitful."
Thus, taken together, it seems that the Scriptures are challenging us to understand that it isn't God who sows the seed and we who prepare the soil. We are being called to break down this dichotomy between us and God, and to recognize that God's action is always primary. He is the one who prepares the soil of our hearts. He is the one who sows the seed of His Word. And He is the water that brings the Word to life. Such recognition of our complete dependency on God is reaffirmed by Scripture and the saints: as St Augustine puts it in his Confessions: "I would not exist, my God. . . unless you existed in me. Or. . . rather. . . I would not exist unless I existed in you." (1)
What role, then, does our freedom play in this process? For we were not created powerless. But we must recognize that our freedom and our power come not from ourselves, but through participation in God's freedom and power - with the irony being, of course, that the more we try to act on our own, the more powerless we actually are. So, then, what we are called to do is to submit to God's action and cooperate with it. Cooperate with Him plowing and weeding our hardened, overgrown hearts - we cannot do it alone. Allow Him to scatter the seed on us. Allow Him to water us. Our primary action here is one of receptivity.
And our God in His graciousness has given us so many opportunities to cooperate with His will! The sacraments of the Church are the primary ways we express our cooperation with Him. For what else is the sacrament of reconciliation if not presenting our hearts to be tilled by God's grace? What else is the Mass but letting God's word be sown and watered in us? Availing ourselves of the sacraments of the Church is the path God has given us to align our will with His, presenting our hearts to be remade by Him.
And in our daily lives, we demonstrate this active receptivity through our humble acceptance of God's will each and every day. This acceptance is so challenging. So often I personally find that in difficult times my hope is always future facing: "Things are hard now, but I know God will take care of things eventually!" Beneath my future-facing hope is a selfish desire: that God will take care of things by making them work out the way I want them to! It is much harder to turn my future hope into a present one - that is, to say: "Things are hard now, but I know God IS taking care of things. Right here, right now. This hard time right now is part of God's taking care of things."
For the hard times we endure are the experience of the soil of our hearts being broken up, having weeds ripped out of them, being drenched in a flood that seems like it may drown, and having the seeds within us break open and die. All of this is painful - yet it is also true that, the more we willingly submit ourselves to it, the less painful and indeed the more joyful it becomes. And if we let God do His work in us with complete surrender, we can trust that He will yield a fruitful harvest in and through us, and that we will "shout and sing for joy."
Do you, like me, have trouble trusting that God's will is being done in and through the challenging and stressful moments of life? Try praying the Surrender Novena - it is so simple, so consoling, and yet also so difficult!
Also for some inspiration, enjoy this song by the Hillbilly Thomists.
Know of our prayers for you that we may all become "good trees" in the beautiful garden of God!
Footnotes:
(1) Augustine, Confessions, trans. Sarah Ruden (New York: The Modern Library, 2018), 5.
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