Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, July 15, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil
July 15, 2023

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, when the Jesus will give us one of his most important parables describing how we’re supposed to respond to his words and work.
• I’d like to begin with a question: Why among the first apostles did eleven become great saints and one become the most notorious traitor of all time? As I’m recording this in Rome, we can ask similarly why have some popes become great heroes of faith like Leo, Gregory, Nicholas and John Paul and others have become scandalous and notorious? Wasn’t God trying to help them all equally to guide his Church? 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 responsive to grace, to education, and to coaching, respectively.
• This is an important lesson for us all to grasp and it will help us to understand better what Jesus will be teaching us on Sunday as he gives us the important Parable of the Sower and the Seed and teaches 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 determine how well we pay attention and how receptive and responsive we are to him, to what he teaches, and to all that he seeks to do in our life.
• To understand what he communicates in the Parable, we first need to grasp a little about ancient farming techniques. Sowers would scatter seed along long thin plots before any soil had been turned over. The seed would land on four different types of earth. The first was the hardened land between plots that would serve as paths on which people would walk. They were the ancient sidewalks and no seed could penetrate. The second was 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. Because the roots couldn’t penetrate the limestone, 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 was basically good earth that could have borne a lot of fruit if it weren’t covered with thornbushes and weeds that exhausted the nutrients of the soil so that good seed couldn’t grow. And the last type was 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 hearts to his message and actually accusing him of working his indisputable miracles not by God’s power but by the devil’s. 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, namely, 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 had 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.
  • And we see the good soil in people like the Blessed Mother, whose feast, under the title of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, the Church observes on July 16. As the ancient icons attest, she is depicted as having 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 it into practice, 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 Sunday’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. Many Catholics, to be honest, can’t even remember on Monday what the readings were at Sunday Mass, and that’s a sign not so much 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, and resolve 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 of God and his righteousness and then begin to seek the King 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.
• To bear fruit, however, we have to pay attention to and remedy what can prevent our spiritual growth.
• 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 seemingly not even the Lord 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 for the first time from the lips of Jesus himself.
• 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. These are folks who are always trying to evaluate whether they like a particular homily, spiritual book, or religious podcast, rather than trying spiritually to profit from everything God gives. Each of us needs to ask God to chisel — or even to jackhammer — through our own 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 honor, or power or pleasure more than the will of God, or who 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 others 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 sadly won’t. The only thing we can do is to keep sowing the seed with eager longing, trying to help others eradicate the thorns and limestone and overturn their hardened soil, as we ask 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 passage on which the homily was based was: 

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