VIABILITY FOR HEAVENLY LIFE

SUNDAY, FIFTENTH WEEK IN ORDERINARY TIME

Isa 55:10-11; Ps 65:10-14; Rom 8:18-23; Mt 13:1-23

The Word of God as Seed of Spiritual Life

The Church arranges the readings for this Sunday to aid us in a deeper and better understanding of the mystery of our salvation in Jesus Christ. The prominent analogy is that of the seed sown in the soil. Just as a viable seed sown in the soil struggles with the life it contains against the forces of death, darkness, and decay, our souls, receiving the new and spiritual life from the word of God, struggle against the forces of evil, sin, and death. The forces of death and corruption, working on the seed, cause it to bring forth a new shoot through which it breaks through the earth covering and holding it down, to receive light and fresh air, with which it commences the production of new structures supporting the new life. The seed sown in the dark earth will be unable to accomplish this feat if it is not viable enough. The analogy is apt for our spiritual life; for the word of God we hear and keep within is Spirit and life. The containment of the word of God or the Gospel within us makes us viable and able to push forth new spiritual life when the forces of evil, sin, and death act on us from the world. Being in the world, we can never escape the actions of these forces. One without the Gospel is proven to be unviable and dies in the struggles of the world. But our faith in the Gospel we have heard makes us viable and ready to produce heavenly life and spiritual fruits.

As in the case of the seed sown in the soil by the farmer, the seed has no choice of its own but must work along with the will of the farmer. The farmer who owns the seed and decides to sow it in the soil plays a similar role to that of God in our lives. God made us for himself, and he decides what to make of us. God decides when, how, and where to sow us, for his own purposes. But unlike the seed, which owes its life and viability not to the farmer, we owe our life and viability to God. The farmer only produced the seeds from his labour. But God created us, and we belong to him. Our lives and spiritual viability belong to God, and we need to cooperate with him in order to blossom in spiritual life and produce spiritual fruits. God expresses these truths through the prophet Isaiah. “As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do,” God assures us here that his word has all the graces we need to sprout out spiritual life from the decay of the material or natural life. Thus, there is no deficiency on the part of the word of God proclaimed to us.

Why then are we unable to possess a viable and robust spiritual life? Since there is no deficiency in what God sends to us, the deficiency must be on the part of our reception. This must be the case, for whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver. We must critically examine ourselves on how we attend and receive the word of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word, illuminates our minds on the categories of problems bedevilling our reception of the word of God through the parable of the Sower. “Imagine a sower going out to sow. As he sowed, some seeds fell on the edge of the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on patches of rock where they found little soil and sprang up straight away, because there was no depth of earth; but as soon as the sun came up, they were scorched and, not having any roots, they withered away. Others fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Others fell on rich soil and produced their crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” The Lord captured our various problems and hindrances in living the spiritual life fruitfully through this parable.

The Gospel we have received has full potential to produce the best heavenly life and fruits within us. The problem, according to our Lord, is the manner in which we receive the word or the structure of the soil, our hearts, into which we receive it. A life or heart without privacy or a secret room cannot grow the word of God; the heavenly seed needs loving and tender attention. In this regard, it does not matter whether we go out or remain inside; the world, with its dark forces, finds a way to trespass into our hearts through social media. Our hearts are rocky when old, sinful habits, which are evil structures, are present in us. These harden our hearts and make them impervious to holy roots from the word of God. Thorny hearts are those still savouring the worldly sensations and amusements. These choke the word of God to death in the hearts where they are present. Thus, John 2:15 advises us not to love the world and anything in it; for such a love is incompatible with our love for God. Our hearts are called rich soil when we have laboured along with God to hedge off our hearts from the world, break up the rocks, root out the stems and stumps, and plough the soil in preparation for the reception of the word of God.

The labour involved in carrying out the above is actually beyond our human strength and ingenuity. Only God can accomplish them with our cooperation. Hence, Saint Paul talks about the labour and suffering we must undertake for the inestimable life of heaven to sprout and mature to fruition in us. “I think that what we suffer in this life can never be compared to the glory, as yet unrevealed, which is waiting for us.” He confirms here that the whole work is accomplished by God, with our cooperation, for his own purposes, which entails our salvation and the redemption of the whole universe. “The whole creation is eagerly waiting for God to reveal his sons. It was not for any fault on the part of creation that it was made unable to attain its purpose, it was made so by God; but creation still retains the hope of being freed, like us, from its slavery to decadence, to enjoy the same freedom and glory as the children of God.” As we have always noted, the two processes: the natural process and the spiritual process are for the same purpose. The former always serves as the school of enlightenment for us to understand the latter. This is the way Paul uses nature here; if nature has been dying and giving birth to new things, we are also dying and giving birth to spiritual reality through the viability of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ planted in our hearts.

Let us pray: O God, who show the light of your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christians the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honour. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.