Bearing Fruit from Jesus’ Implanting, Sixteenth Wednesday (I), July 24, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Charbel Maklouf
July 24, 2019
Ex 16:1-5.9-15, Ps 78, Mt 13:1-9

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us the first of eight parables in the 13th Chapter of St. Matthew. Jesus is inspiring us, first, to take a soil sample of our hearts, to help determine how we receive and respond to him, to all that he teaches us, and to all that he seeks to do in our life. He is the Sower who goes out to sow. He ultimately sows himself like a “grain of wheat” (Jn 12:24): he sows his word, his grace, his body and blood, all he is and has he tries to implant within us and within the world. But the way we respond to those gifts varies.
• To understand what he says, we first need to grasp a little about ancient farming techniques (and how much farming has advanced in 2,000 years!). Sowers would scatter seed on long thin plots before any soil had been turned over. The seed would land on four different types of earth. The first is the hardened land between plots that would serve as the paths on which people would walk and make hard; no seed could penetrate those ancient sidewalks. The second would be the very thin “rocky” soil that would have thick layers of limestone a few inches underneath the surface. Here the seeds would take and quickly germinate because the water would be retained within the few inches of soil and when the temperature would quickly rise in the morning. Because the roots couldn’t penetrate the stone, however, the sprouts would not be able to last for long, quickly dehydrating and withering as the sun grew in intensity. The third terrain Jesus describes as “thorny” soil, which is basically good earth that could have borne a lot of fruit if it weren’t covered with thornbushes and weeds that would grow up exhausting the nutriets of the soil so that the good seed really couldn’t grow. And the last type was good soil that Jesus describes would bear much fruit.
• Just as a sower would scatter seed over all four types of earth, so Jesus scatters his word, his grace, his saving deeds over all four kinds of people represented by the respective soil samples. We see all four soil types among his first listeners.
  • We saw in many of the scribes and Pharisees the hardened soil that totally resisted Jesus’ words and the testimony of his miracles, closing their ears and their hearts to his message and actually accusing him of working his indisputable miracles not by God’s power but by the devil. No matter what Jesus said, no matter how he said it, no matter how he backed it up by deeds, they weren’t going to listen and be converted. The evil one, as Jesus mentions in the Parable, would come to snatch the seed away before it could ever get planted.
  • We see the rocky or superficial soil in the people for whom Jesus worked the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. They listened to Jesus for hours, they even followed him after the miracle along the entire upper lip of the Sea of Galilee, but most of them abandoned Jesus as soon as he asked them to believe something they found hard, his teaching on the Eucharist, that to have life we need to gnaw on his flesh and drink his blood. They were willing to listen to Jesus’ words for a time, but when he asked them to do something that made them uncomfortable, their faith withered and died.
  • We see the thorny soil in those who said that they would follow Jesus but first they wanted to bury their father, or go on their honeymoon, or inspect their new oxen. We also see it in the Rich Young Man, who came to Jesus as a good teacher and who kept all the commandments from his youth, but who — when Jesus gave him a choice between storing up for himself treasure in heaven or holding on to his earthly riches — chose the thornbush of his worldly wealth. His materialism choked his growth in faith and prevented his seeking “perfection” together with Jesus.
  • We see the good soil in people like the Blessed Mother, who, as the ancient icons attest, conceived the word of God first through her “ear” before she conceived him in her womb, whom Jesus praised for hearing the word of God and putting into pratice, who wanted her whole life to develop, as she told God through his angel, according to God’s word. We see this good soil in so many other saints like eleven of the apostles, Martha, Mary and Lazarus,  and others who bore abundant fruit by allowing God to work through them.
• The point of today’s parable is that God wants us all to receive his word and to respond to him with good soil. To become a saint we don’t have to be a spiritual superhero; we simply need to give God permission and correspond to what he wishes to do in and through us. We just need to have good, receptive and responsive soil. If we’re going to do that, however, we have to graps what good soil is. And there are three things we need to grasp about good soil.
  • The first is that Jesus tells us that good soil produces fruit, and not just a little fruit, but abundant fruit: 30, 60 or 100 fold, all huge numbers according to the Jewish mentality of the age.
  • The second quality of good soil: eager longing to bear fruit and let God’s purpose be accomplished. The real test of good soil is how we look to let the seed grow in us and give birth to massive amounts of deeds of genuine love for God and each other over years. When we receive God’s word on good soil, we do bear abundant fruit. When we hear his word on forgiveness, for example, we begin to receive and share that mercy. When we hear his word on being peacemakers, we seek to go out with the Prince of Peace and spread that tranquility of order with God and others. When we hear his word on seeking first the kingdom, we begin to seek him in our study, our work, our relationships, our community life. When we hear his word to chop off our body parts if they lead us to sin, we focus with brutal determination on eliminating from ourselves not just sins but near occasions of sin. When we hear his word to love others as he loves us, we begin immediately to look around us and ask for the grace to love each other with the love with which Christ loved us.
  • The third quality of good soil: eradicating the hardness, the stones and the thorns. In order to be good soil, we need more than to listen attentively and eagerly to God’s word so that we allow it to accomplish its purpose in us. We also need to be aware of the types of things that can make infertile the good soil we receive on the day of our baptism.
• In today’s first reading, we see the stubborn, complaining soil of the Israelites in the desert. Even after the ten miracles by which God showed his closeness to the Israelites and his power to Pharaoh and the Egyptians, after especially the miracle of the Red Sea, they should have had good soil, but they still didn’t trust in God and they grumbled. In his mercy, God responded, by giving them manna in the morning and quails at night, and he would give them also water from the rock for 40 years in the desert. What God did for them with manna he does for us all the more with the “true manna,” Jesus Himself in the Holy Eucharist. From the parable of the Sower and the Seed, we can ask ourselves about our receptivity to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. Do we receive him with good soil and bear abundant fruit? How does Holy Communion impact our work, our crosses, our joys, our day? As I like to say, when we take two Advil we have very clear expectations of the impact it will have. Do we have even greater expectations when it comes to receiving God inside?
• Today we celebrate two saints that received the True Manna — and so many other divine graces — on good soil and bore abundant fruit. The first is St. Charbel Maklouf, a great Maronite monk, priest and hermit. As a young boy, he was drawn to the example of his maternal uncles who were monks. Shepherding his family’s small flock as a boy, he would take them to a grotto where he had installed an icon of the  the Blessed Virgin Mary and would spend the day in prayer. He learned from her how to receive and respond to the Word of God. His family wanted him to marry and to continue his hard work on the farm, but when he was 23, he left home without telling them because of the opposition to begin his training as a monk and then as a priest and finally as a hermit. He sought constantly to turn with the Lord in prayer. He was deeply devoted to the Lord Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, and it’s significant that he basically died during Mass, having a stroke while celebrating the divine liturgy from which he never recovered. God waited to call him home for eight days and summoned him on Christmas Eve. After his death, his remains glowed, people came to him to ask for miracles that were granted, when his body was examined it was found incorrupt, and now he continues to bear fruit through his miraculous intercession.
• The second saint is Saint Christina of Bolsena, whom we remember because she is the patroness of Sr. Maria Christina in this community. Saint Christina was a martyr who was basically persecuted and betrayed by her father for her fidelity to Christ as a Christian. Her remains were eventually taken to the Church dedicated to her in Bolsena and there happened one of the greatest Eucharistic miracles of all time, which we remember on Corpus Christi. She teaches us how we can bear fruit even in the midst of persecution and how when, like Jesus, a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it will bear abundant fruit.
• As we celebrate Mass today, we ask through their intercession that we might have soil like them, and bear great fruit from the word of God that Jesus has just proclaimed and the Word-made-flesh that he himself will soon implant within our bodies and souls.

The readings for today’s Mass were: