Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) (Vigil)
July 11, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday.
- Why among the first apostles did eleven become great saints and one become the most notorious traitor of all time? Why among the students of a poor, inner city school will some kids from down-and-out circumstances go on to become famous surgeons and others end up in jail? Why do some children go on to become great athletes while others with the same coaches and even greater physical coordination and endowments never make it? One of the most basic reasons is because some people are more receptive and more responsive to coaching, to education and to grace.
- This is an important lesson for us all to grasp and it will help us to understand better what Jesus will teaching us on Sunday as he gives us one of his most important parables, the Parable of the Sower and the Seed. Jesus teaches us us crucial lessons about how to be a more fruitful disciple and a more effective evangelist, how to receive God’s grace and how to live in accordance with it. At the end of the Parable, Jesus says, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear!,” which is the ancient way of saying, “Pay attention!.” By means of the Parable, Jesus is going to help us to take a soil sample of our hearts, to help determine how well we pay attention, how much we receive and respond to him, what he teaches, and all that he seeks to do in our life.
- To understand what he says, we first need to grasp a little about ancient farming techniques. 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. They were the ancient sidewalks and no seed could penetrate. The second is very thin “rocky” soil that would have thick layers of limestone a few inches underneath the surface. Here the seeds take and quickly germinate because the water would be retained within the few inches of soil. 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 rising sun grew in intensity. The third terrain Jesus describes as “thorny” soil, which is basically good earth that could bear a lot of fruit if it weren’t covered with thornbushes and weeds that exhaust the nutriets of the soil so that good seed can’t grow. And the last type is good soil that Jesus describes bears 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. 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. We see all four soil types in people today.
- The ultimate point of today’s parable is that God wants us all to receive his word and to respond to him with good soil. 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. Do we listen to God’s word with the intention to bear great fruit? Sometimes Catholics place more trust in Tylenol than they do in hearing the Word of God or receiving the Holy Eucharist. Many of us listen to worldly gurus more attentively than we do to Jesus. Most Catholics, frankly, can’t even remember what the readings were at Sunday Mass the day after, and that’s a sign not of a bad memory but of a defective listening. If the Word of God is going to bear fruit, we have to listen to it with bearing fruit in mind. Those who have good soil hear his word on forgiveness, for example, we to receive and share that mercy. They hear his word on being peacemakers, and go out with the Prince of Peace to spread that tranquility of order with God and others. They hear his word on seeking first the kingdom and begin to seek him in their study, work, relationships, and family life. They hear his word to chop off our body parts if they lead us to sin, and focus with brutal determination on eliminating from themselves not just sins but near occasions of sin. They hear his word to love others as he loves us, and begin immediately to look around themselves and ask for the grace to love each person they meet with the love with which Christ loved them.
- But to bear fruit we have to attend to what can prevent that fruit.
- We have to attend to the hardened stubborn soil in us. We see it in know-it-alls. We see it in the proud. We see it in hardened sinners. But we also see it frequently with seniors — even good, morally-upright elders — who because of the passage of years have become so set in their ways that not even God can change them. They consider themselves “old dogs” whom not even God can teach “new tricks.” We need to be aware of our stubbornness and listen to the word of God as if we’re hearing it anew.
- We similarly have to attend to the rocky or superficial soil that we see in those who listen to the word of God for the pleasure it gives but don’t allow it to go deep because they never really make and follow through on firm resolutions. We need to ask God to chisel — or even to jackhammer — through that subterrantean limestone so that what he seeks to plant within us can make a profound difference.
- And we have to attend to the thorns. Jesus doesn’t say the thorns are sins, which would certainly choke the word of God, but rather “worldly anxiety, the lure of riches and the pleasures of life.” These suffocate the spiritual life by sucking away our energy. We seek mammon rather than God, or pursue pleasure more than the will of God — how many sin because they prioritize sexual pleasure over divine love — or are excessively preoccupied with the cares of the world and various anxieties that God can no longer get through. Jesus is not calling us to pretend that we don’t have fears and anxieties, but to go to him with them.
- The last point I’d like to make is that this parable really helps us to handle setbacks when we’re trying to share the faith with our family, friends and others. We may sow the seed of God’s word as well as anyone can, but we may not bear fruit because they may be right now too hardened, or too superficial, or too concerned with pleasure, riches or worldly anxieties to let the word take root and grow. We shouldn’t take such setbacks personally, because we can’t control others’ soil. Some people will use their ears to hear and some won’t. The only thing we can do is to keep sowing the seed with eager longing, trying to help eradicate the thorns and limestone and overturn the hardened soil, as we beg God’s help to prepare the soil of their hearts to receive him fruitfully.
- The biggest factor as to whether at the end of life we will end up a saint is the type of soil with which we respond to the seed of all God’s action in our life. This Sunday Jesus wants to till, cultivate and fertilize our soul. Let’s give him full cooperation! Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear!
The Gospel on which the homily was based was:
Gospel MT 13:1-23
On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea.
Such large crowds gathered around him
that he got into a boat and sat down,
and the whole crowd stood along the shore.
And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying:
“A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path,
and birds came and ate it up.
Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil.
It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep,
and when the sun rose it was scorched,
and it withered for lack of roots.
Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it.
But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”
The disciples approached him and said,
“Why do you speak to them in parables?”
He said to them in reply,
“Because knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven
has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.
To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich;
from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
This is why I speak to them in parables, because
they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.
Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says:
You shall indeed hear but not understand,
you shall indeed look but never see.
Gross is the heart of this people,
they will hardly hear with their ears,
they have closed their eyes,
lest they see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their hearts and be converted,
and I heal them.
“But blessed are your eyes, because they see,
and your ears, because they hear.
Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people
longed to see what you see but did not see it,
and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
“Hear then the parable of the sower.
The seed sown on the path is the one
who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it,
and the evil one comes and steals away
what was sown in his heart.
The seed sown on rocky ground
is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy.
But he has no root and lasts only for a time.
When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word,
he immediately falls away.
The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word,
but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word
and it bears no fruit.
But the seed sown on rich soil
is the one who hears the word and understands it,
who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”
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