Bearing Fruit from the Commandments, 16th Friday (I), July 28, 2017

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
July 28, 2017
Ex 20:1-17, Ps 19, Mt 13:18-23

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today’s Gospel gives us a chance to take anew the soil sample of our heart, to determine our receptivity and response to God’s action. God’s word, as we prayed in the Responsorial Psalm, has the power of eternal life. Jesus wishes it to bear 30, 60, 100 and more in us, and it has the ability to change in life in these types of big number ways, but that depends on the soil that receives that word.
• To have good soil begins with a real reverence for the power of the Word. Then it requires tilling hardened soil, drilling through the rocky layers underneath shallow soil, and taking out the thorn bushes of worldly cares and anxieties that can choke the growth of the good seed. Doing all of this allows us to hear the Word with an understanding heart and allow its power to begin to transform us and through us the world.
• Today in the first reading we can examine the soil we have to the Ten Commandments and how much fruit they have borne in our life.
  • There are many who respond to the Decalogue with hardened soil. Even those who grew up as Catholics and Jews, when they hear the Commandments they think about them as suggestions and often reject them. They serve idols of their own making, often materialistic golden calves. They treat Sunday as if it’s just another day or day off. They build whole industries off breaking the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” which is what Planned Parenthood and the abortion business is all about. They are stubbornly resistant to the Sixth Commandment and prefer the make-it-up-as-you-go-along dictates of the sexual revolution. They covet and believe their envy is justified.
  • There are others who respond with superficial soil. They memorize the commandments. They see them as coming from God. But when tribulations come up, the commandments take a back seat and they don’t bear fruit in training them to love God and love neighbor, which is what the two tablets of the law do respectively as Jesus himself said (Mt 22:40).
  • There are others for whom worldly cares and anxieties choke the growth of the seed. They give in to various pleasures or various fears, which lead them to relativize the force of the Commandments. We see with many teenagers, for example, that selfishly seeking the satisfaction of desires or excessive concern about their future, leads them to neglect and dishonor their parents, or to tell a lie to them or to their teachers or coaches when they haven’t done what they were expected to do, or even to steal something when they don’t have the money to purchase it. They’re otherwise good kids, kids who pray, kids who want a relationship with God, but they’re full of thorn bushes and it impedes the growth of God such that the Commandments bear little fruit.
  • Then there are those with good soil in whom you can see abundant fruit from the life of the commandments. They really do love God with all their mind, heart, soul and strength. They use their capacity for speech to speak to him in prayer and speak about him with reverence, rather than blaspheme. They not only show up at Sunday Mass, but truly live it as the highlight of their week and live Sunday as a day real day for love, love for the Lord, for family members and for others. They are dedicated to their parents. They seek to affirm the lives of others. They treat those to whom their attracted with purity, piety, chastity and fidelity. They are happy when others are blessed. They tell others the truth. They become, in short, virtuous through the keeping of the commandments and not only sacrifice for others but become open through the pedagogy of the commandments for Jesus to take them much deeper into the Christian way, something that allows them to bear even greater fruit.
• Our receptivity is not just to the “words” of God but the “Word of God.” That word has the power, we prayed in the Psalm, of everlasting life, something St. Peter himself affirmed in the Eucharistic discourse in Capernaum. That Word is perfect, refreshing, trustworthy, right, clear, enlightening, enduring, true. It gives wisdom and rejoices the heart. It is more precious that a heap of purest gold. The word of God, in fact, is more valuable than all the riches of the world, and we’re called to live on every word that comes from God’s mouth because each word is an unending bank vault that will continue to bear fruit if we receive it on good soil, on ardent, hungry, responsive soil that listens to these words as words to be done.
• Each Mass we not only receive that power through our ears when we hear the Word of God proclaimed, but through our mouths when the Word-made-flesh comes within. Jesus said once that he was the grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying in order to bear great fruit (Jn 12:24). He implants himself as that grain of wheat, as that good seed, within us today. May he give us good and receptive soil so that, united as branches to the Vine (Jn 15), we may bear fruit that will remain into eternity!

The readings for today’s Mass were: