What’s the Soil of Your Soul?

The seed is the Word of God; Christ is the Sower. All who come to Him will live forever.

Today’s Gospel is one that anyone who grew up in a rural community can relate to. Like the people Jesus was sharing the Parable of the Sower with, it makes sense to us—we’ve seen it in nature and in our own gardening or farm work. Jesus’ parable really helps us take a good look at the life we have lived, and most especially our life of faith.

God is showering down His grace upon us all the time. It’s only by His grace, love, and mercy that we’re alive, but what Jesus is drawing us to examine today is Sanctifying Grace—the kind of grace that God sowed in our hearts at our Baptism and continues to give us every time we receive a sacrament. This is the grace that saves us, the grace that is looking for rich soil in our hearts to plant itself in. The grace that, if cultivated and cared for, will lead us to know, love, and serve the Lord as we should—the grace that prepares us for Heaven.

It's interesting that when we reflect on the types of soil Jesus describes in the parable, we can recall those times when we have received God’s grace (the seed) into our hearts, but it didn’t yield the harvest it should have. In those times, maybe our hearts were like a hard-packed path that God’s grace couldn’t penetrate, and we allowed the birds—those who would draw us away from God—to take it away.

Or the times God’s grace landed on a heart that was beginning to soften; however, our hearts of stone still prevailed. Although we felt God’s love, we were so shallow that we looked at worldly things as more important and let the busyness of the world burn it away.

And still again, other times when God has sown His grace in us at a time that we were deeply involved in sinful things (the thorns). While we still knew that God was calling us to repentance and that He was ready to forgive us, instead of rejecting the sin and turning to God, we allowed the sin to prevail and choke out God’s love.

Finally, I pray that we have all experienced a time when God’s grace has come to us and we were fully prepared to receive it. Our hearts were rich and fertile. We took it in, nurtured it, cared for it, and saw a bountiful harvest of God’s love in our lives and the lives of those we love.

In our first reading, the children of Israel were complaining about how hard they had it since they had been freed from slavery in Egypt, because now they were starving in the desert. After all the miracles He had performed for them to obtain their freedom, they still didn’t trust God, and they even spoke of how well-fed they were in Egypt. It almost sounds like they would have been willing to go back and be enslaved again, just for some food.

God heard their grumbling and, in His love, provided them with quail and manna to eat. But of course, it wasn’t long before they were complaining about that as well. God was giving them everything, but they still weren’t satisfied. Sounds a lot like us today. Through Jesus, God has given us everything we need to have happiness now and with Him in Heaven. Through Baptism, He has filled us with Himself, shares His life with us, and offers forgiveness whenever we stray. However, often we are so focused on the world and temporal things that no matter how much we have—no matter how great God’s blessings—it’s never good enough; we’re never satisfied. We get so distracted and disillusioned by our own selfish inclinations and here-and-now needs, that we’re blinded to the love and mercy of God that is overflowing in our lives.

This is the kind of heart Jesus is speaking of in the Parable of the Sower—a heart that isn’t ready to receive the Lord and live according to His teachings. A heart that has become so hardened, a life so intense and tangled up in knots, that God becomes an afterthought. Jesus is calling; He’s talking to us all the time, but often we just aren’t listening.

Today, the Church remembers the life of a person who was listening when Jesus called—St. Bridget of Sweden. Throughout her life, starting at about age ten, St. Bridget had very profound visions of Jesus, which greatly impacted her entire life. Her visions, instead of isolating her from the affairs of the world, drew her to become involved in many of the issues of the time. She saw no contradiction between her mystical experiences and her secular activity. Her life is a testimony to the possibility of living a holy life in the world.

Like St. Bridget, let us share our faith and personal encounters with God with everyone we meet—not only by our words, but most importantly by the way we live our lives and love our neighbor. Let’s open our hearts to the Lord, making them fertile ground for His grace, so that we may live the life He is calling us to live, come to Him, and live with Him forever.

St. Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Amen.